by Connie Frierson
1 John 4:7-21
Well Beloved, every Christmas Season I experience something, something baffling and big and awesome, something that only seems to come in the cold and quiet of winter. I want to see if you experience this too. At some time on Christmas Eve or Christmas day or the week after Christmas or even on Epiphany, I get the sense that I need to think about why I am here? What is my purpose? What is supposed to drive my life? This is such a big question that I am not even sure if the question is why, how, what or who. It is the big question of our life. The question comes at funny times, here, in the busiest time of church and family, I might be up to my elbows washing greasy roasting pans in the sink. You know that dishwater that was once soapy, bubbly white and as you work just isn’t anymore. Well I will be scrubbing the worst of the pots, when I look up through my kitchen window and I think who am I supposed to be. Or I might be snatching up armfuls of torn wrapping paper off the living room floor and wonder how am I supposed to live. Or I might be letting the dog out for a short walk in the woods and there I stand with the house full of people and light at my back and the dark winter night before me, In that moment the nebula of the big question descends on me. Does anyone else here have those moments? Does anyone else experience this particularly in the snow and cold of winter and the warmth and the light of Christmas?
Well here we are in the last week of Advent, a time of reflection and preparation before the celebration of Christ’s birth. So now is a good time to prepare for that life question. Our Advent Candle this morning is the candle that symbolizes love. Our scripture passage speaks of God as love. God loving us. God sending his son. God, who is invisible, made love visible in Christ. How we love the invisible God by loving one another. This is a good place to start reflection on the big answer to the big question, the giant snowball question that is why, how, what and who all rolled into one.
People have been asking this question in different ways for thousands of years. The Heidelberg Catechism, that great masterpiece of theological reflection finished in 1562, asked the big question this way. “Q.1.What is your only comfort in life and in death?” Answer, that I belong body and soul to Jesus Christ, who paid the debt for sin, frees me from evil, protects me, gives me life and through the Holy Spirit makes me ready and willing to live for him. I paraphrased but that is the substance. It is masterful, true, and important. But we need a month of Sundays to puzzle it out. There is a simpler answer to the big question. A lawyer asked Jesus the big question like this, “What is the most important commandment?” This is a variation on the big question, “Jesus what is most important?” Jesus answered to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself. If we are to prepare for the big question here is where we need to start, with Jesus’ answer, the Heidelberg Catechism, our scripture today from 1 John 4. These all give us the God’s answer when the big question comes to call some snowy moment in the next weeks. Love with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Belong to Christ body and soul. Love one another. This is the answer to the big question.
My problem is that the answer to my big question is so big that I don’t know how to do it. Love with heart, soul, mind and strength, Love because God is love, Belong body and soul to Christ. Those answers are giant and enormous. Those answers are ginormous. I think our ginormous God can help us with this by thinking very, very small, thinking of babies and old men’s toes.
Those things don’t seem to go together do they, babies and old men’s toes? But when we are looking for the big answers we need to look for those moments when God is teaching us. A teachable moment came to me as I was reading A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. I think most of you have heard the title, or seen the movie, directed by Elia Kazan and many of you have read, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. The book is largely autobiographical and was written by Betty Smith. It recounts the experience and life and thought of a young girl, Francie Nolan growing up in about 1912 in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. In the particular passage I am thinking of Francie is at the day old bread store, waiting for the trucks to come in for the poor of Brooklyn to buy their bread cheap. Francie is waiting and sees the oldest man she has ever seen. This ancient bent over man is sitting in the sunlight by the bakery window resting. Francie sees what perhaps only an eleven year olds would notice. She looks down and she sees the old man’s shoes are broken open and Francie can see his calloused, narly toes through the broken shoes. Quite frankly Francie is repulsed. Those toes are gray and curling and dirty. Suddenly Francie has a new thought in her 11-year-old head, a kind of scary thought. Francie suddenly knows that this old man’s toes were once as treasured and beautiful and loved as her little brother’s toes. That this broken, older than old, man was once someone’s baby, someone’s treasure, someone’s beloved. And in her mind’s eye Francie sees him at all the stages of his life, kicking his legs in a stroller, toddling, playing ball, courting, becoming a father and provider, so useful and necessary in the meat and potatoes of life. But then Francie becomes frightened because she knows that she herself will become old and curled and calloused like that old man’s toes. This is a true moment, when we see past and present and future melding together, when we see our mortality, when we see others and see ourselves too. For Francie this was a big question moment. This was a moment to see life and death, the old man’s life and death, and Francie’s life and death.
The only thing that can give hope and meaning to life and death is to see both life and death wrapped in God’s love and care. The great truth of God comes out when we see both babies and old men’s toes as being wrapped in God’s love. The thing that gives meaning to all the questions of life is to think that the old man, and the young girl Francie and you and I are loved. We are the beloveds. And we join in with God’s love when we love the old man with the narly toes and the baby he once was and frightened young Francie. “Beloved let us love one another, because love is from God.” We do not see the invisible God, but we see that beaten down old man sitting in the sunlight in the warm bakery. So we are to love God, by loving the one God puts in front of us. We have times of great insight when we see others as God’s beloved.
These are the things I think about in the snowy days of Advent. These are things to think and pray about in this time leading up to the celebration of God’s love come to earth; as a baby, as a boy in the temple, as a teacher and healer, as a broken and bleeding man on an ugly cross. The Beloved son helps us to see all the other Beloveds around us.
I would like to end this sermon with a hymn, In the Bleak Mid Winter. Matthew Ward sang this hymn last Sunday night at his concert here. I have included the lyrics in your bulletin. I had never heard the song before. But the hymn captured my winter reflections on the big question. Here are some things you may think about as Bruce sings; how cold things are before God’s love come into our lives, before love warms us, we are iron and stone; how even heaven could not hold God’s love that spills out to us in the coming of Christ; how Mary worshiped truly by kissing that baby head. Perhaps the question in the final verse is our big advent question. What other gift can we give the Christ Child, but the gift of love?
So beloved, kiss a babies head this Christmas. Wrap the elderly in the warmth of a sunny window. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, because Christ came for love of us. We exist body and soul to return that love to Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Candle Messages: Happiness or Joy?
Luke 1:39-45
December 12, 2010
In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
You know, I’m not much of a baseball fan. Other than when the Pirates won the World Series in 1971, and again in 1980, no one in my family paid much attention to baseball. I think that to develop a passion for baseball it helps to grow up in a family that loves baseball.
Don’t get me wrong. I still loved it when the Pirates won the World Series, but I think I loved it as much for other reasons than just a love of baseball or a love of the Pirates. For example, one thing I loved about them winning the 1971 series is that my friends and I, all age 12, got to jump on our bikes and ride around town screaming, “We WON!” at the top of our lungs, and we weren’t going to get in trouble.
What I loved about 1980 series win is that at the time I was in college with a lot of people from Baltimore. And when the Pirates went down 3 games to 1 to the Orioles, the Baltimore fans got very obnoxious, including grabbing a friend of mine’s Terrible Towel and throwing it into the fire in the fireplace. It was really fun to see the smugness wiped off their faces when the Pirates won.
Still, I’ve always been the proverbial “jump-on-the-bandwagon” type of baseball fan. In fact, I was also a bit scared to play baseball. That’s an odd thing to hear me say because I loved playing physical sports lacrosse and hockey, and even backyard tackle football, sports that really do hurt. It’s just that the idea of standing still while someone whips a hardball in my direction,… well,… all I could ever think of while standing in the batter’s box was that the ball was really going to hurt if it hits me.
Despite my ignorance about baseball, there are a lot of things about baseball to really like. For example, my favorite sports movies are all baseball movies. For some reason, baseball plays well on the silver screen. Also, baseball legend has some great stories. And despite my lukewarm feelings about baseball, I was really touched this past week by the death of the great Cubs second baseman Ron Santo.
Those of you who follow baseball know that he was a great baseball player for the Chicago Cubs. Nine times he was on the all-star team, and he won five golden gloves for being the best defensive player in the league at his position. But it wasn’t his feats on the baseball field that made him great. It was how he lived his life that made him great. You see, he wasn’t supposed to be able to play baseball. At age 18, which was in the early 1960s, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Treatments for diabetes at the time were nowhere near what they are now. The doctor told Santo to forget about playing baseball. His condition wouldn’t allow for it. Instead, he needed to focus on doing whatever he could to extend his life. He was told that if he was lucky he could live for 20 or 25 more years, but that was it.
Santo was devastated, but he also didn’t let the doctor define his life. He kept playing baseball, while also self-monitoring his disease. He kept it hidden from others, knowing that the team probably wouldn’t understand, nor support him, if they knew. Despite the threat and burden that diabetes posed to his life, he never let it get him down. He was known for always being filled with joy as both a teammate and a leader. He never complained no matter what he faced.
After baseball, he became a color analyst for Cubs baseball. He was an effervescent figure. In an age when analysts were supposed to be calmly critical, he was a homer. When the Cubs did something great, he cheered. When they didn’t, he pouted and moaned. He wore the love of the Cubs on his sleeve. Over time the ravages of diabetes led to him have eye surgery, heart surgery, and twelve leg surgeries. Finally, they had to amputate both legs below the knee because of chronic circulation problems. Again, he never complained and never let it dim his spirit. The first spring training after his amputations he showed up with Cubs colors wrapped around his prostheses, and joyfully asked how people like his legs.
When Monsignor Daniel Mayall did his funeral last week, he said of Santo that he embodied three virtues: joy, hope, and courage. And of these three the greatest was joy. As he said, “Joy was a virtue for Ron… joy was a part of his life, every day and every season. …Ron Santo was a joyful man.”
When he died last week at age 70, it wasn’t from diabetes. It was from complications of bladder cancer. He died not as a victim of disease, but as a man of joy. He exuded the kind of joy that we hear about in our passage for this morning. Think about the joy of Elizabeth and Mary in our passage. They were in situations that didn’t necessarily evoke joy.
Elizabeth was older. Today she might be considered somewhat young, depending on who you are. She was probably in her mid-forties or early fifties, but she was clearly past normal childbearing age for that day. In an age when the life span was the early fifties, she was old. Think about what it would be like for you if you were in your sixties or seventies today and got pregnant. Would you be joyful? You’d be scared, but she was filled with joy. Mary was at the other end of the spectrum. She was probably in her mid- to late teens. She was pregnant before marriage. Typically a woman in that situation would be quietly dismissed by her fiancé and left to fend for herself. She would also be rejected by her family because of the disgrace she would have brought on them. But she wasn’t scared. She was filled with joy.
Elizabeth, Mary, and Santo all displayed an attitude that is so essential to being a Christian, an attitude that many Christians have a hard time with. We are called to joy, but the problem is that we keep pursuing happiness, and that pursuit gets in the way of our joy. We have all been brought up on the belief of the Declaration of Independence, which says that we all have a right to the pursuit of happiness. And I agree with that belief. But I also know that the pursuit of happiness doesn’t necessarily lead to a sense of joy. There’s a difference between happiness and joy.
What’s the difference? Happiness is brought on by external events. We are happy because of what is going on around us. We are happy when we buy a new car, but as soon as the new car smell goes away, our happiness fades. We are happy when the Steelers or Penguins or Pirates win, but happiness fades if the win wasn’t dominating enough, or till after the next loss. We are happy whenever we get something new, or when something good happens to us, but we aren’t necessarily joyful.
Joy is different. Joy is an internal condition that is a by-product of real faith. We have joy because we sense God with us, and this joy is there no matter what is taking place around us. Joy is something we can feel, even when bad things are taking place. I’m not saying that we are joyful because we are ill, fired from our job, or struggling in our marriage. But we don’t let those things diminish our interior joy for long. Being joyful means that even if someone close to us dies, we can still find good and beauty in life. Being joyful means that even if we become ill, we still find reasons to smile and find what’s good in life around us—the love of others, the abilities of the doctors. Joy comes from within. Happiness comes from without. Joy persists. Happiness is temporary.
Let me give you an example of the difference between the two. Do you remember the Steelers-Buffalo Bills game from two weeks ago? We eventually won in overtime, but it was close. We could have lost. At one point in overtime, the Bills’ young receiver, Stevie Johnson, got free in the end zone. The ball was thrown to him, and he was wide open. The ball hit him right in the hands for an easy catch, but he dropped the ball. He sat dejected in the end zone for a while, and then went on the bench and sulked. Later he tweeted on Twitter the following message to God and his fans: “I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO..”
This is a man who has pursued happiness, but not joy. A joyful person would have recognized that this was just a game, and that he has a lot to be grateful for: having the talent to be a world-class athlete, having the ability to make millions of dollars for catching a football, being cheered on by tens of thousands of fans, and having more opportunities to make game-winning touchdowns. Like Johnson, though, we can confuse happiness and joy.
A mature faith, a faith really rooted in trusting God, being open to God, and serving God, doesn’t depend on events for joy. A mature faith has joy in all circumstances. And it realizes that we face a choice: will we react with joy or something else to life around us? Remember, reacting with joy doesn’t mean ignoring pain. It means having joy in God despite pain, turmoil, struggles, and grief.
Do you pursue happiness in your life, or do you cultivate joy? Your answer makes all the difference in what you experience in life.
Amen.
December 12, 2010
In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
You know, I’m not much of a baseball fan. Other than when the Pirates won the World Series in 1971, and again in 1980, no one in my family paid much attention to baseball. I think that to develop a passion for baseball it helps to grow up in a family that loves baseball.
Don’t get me wrong. I still loved it when the Pirates won the World Series, but I think I loved it as much for other reasons than just a love of baseball or a love of the Pirates. For example, one thing I loved about them winning the 1971 series is that my friends and I, all age 12, got to jump on our bikes and ride around town screaming, “We WON!” at the top of our lungs, and we weren’t going to get in trouble.
What I loved about 1980 series win is that at the time I was in college with a lot of people from Baltimore. And when the Pirates went down 3 games to 1 to the Orioles, the Baltimore fans got very obnoxious, including grabbing a friend of mine’s Terrible Towel and throwing it into the fire in the fireplace. It was really fun to see the smugness wiped off their faces when the Pirates won.
Still, I’ve always been the proverbial “jump-on-the-bandwagon” type of baseball fan. In fact, I was also a bit scared to play baseball. That’s an odd thing to hear me say because I loved playing physical sports lacrosse and hockey, and even backyard tackle football, sports that really do hurt. It’s just that the idea of standing still while someone whips a hardball in my direction,… well,… all I could ever think of while standing in the batter’s box was that the ball was really going to hurt if it hits me.
Despite my ignorance about baseball, there are a lot of things about baseball to really like. For example, my favorite sports movies are all baseball movies. For some reason, baseball plays well on the silver screen. Also, baseball legend has some great stories. And despite my lukewarm feelings about baseball, I was really touched this past week by the death of the great Cubs second baseman Ron Santo.
Those of you who follow baseball know that he was a great baseball player for the Chicago Cubs. Nine times he was on the all-star team, and he won five golden gloves for being the best defensive player in the league at his position. But it wasn’t his feats on the baseball field that made him great. It was how he lived his life that made him great. You see, he wasn’t supposed to be able to play baseball. At age 18, which was in the early 1960s, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Treatments for diabetes at the time were nowhere near what they are now. The doctor told Santo to forget about playing baseball. His condition wouldn’t allow for it. Instead, he needed to focus on doing whatever he could to extend his life. He was told that if he was lucky he could live for 20 or 25 more years, but that was it.
Santo was devastated, but he also didn’t let the doctor define his life. He kept playing baseball, while also self-monitoring his disease. He kept it hidden from others, knowing that the team probably wouldn’t understand, nor support him, if they knew. Despite the threat and burden that diabetes posed to his life, he never let it get him down. He was known for always being filled with joy as both a teammate and a leader. He never complained no matter what he faced.
After baseball, he became a color analyst for Cubs baseball. He was an effervescent figure. In an age when analysts were supposed to be calmly critical, he was a homer. When the Cubs did something great, he cheered. When they didn’t, he pouted and moaned. He wore the love of the Cubs on his sleeve. Over time the ravages of diabetes led to him have eye surgery, heart surgery, and twelve leg surgeries. Finally, they had to amputate both legs below the knee because of chronic circulation problems. Again, he never complained and never let it dim his spirit. The first spring training after his amputations he showed up with Cubs colors wrapped around his prostheses, and joyfully asked how people like his legs.
When Monsignor Daniel Mayall did his funeral last week, he said of Santo that he embodied three virtues: joy, hope, and courage. And of these three the greatest was joy. As he said, “Joy was a virtue for Ron… joy was a part of his life, every day and every season. …Ron Santo was a joyful man.”
When he died last week at age 70, it wasn’t from diabetes. It was from complications of bladder cancer. He died not as a victim of disease, but as a man of joy. He exuded the kind of joy that we hear about in our passage for this morning. Think about the joy of Elizabeth and Mary in our passage. They were in situations that didn’t necessarily evoke joy.
Elizabeth was older. Today she might be considered somewhat young, depending on who you are. She was probably in her mid-forties or early fifties, but she was clearly past normal childbearing age for that day. In an age when the life span was the early fifties, she was old. Think about what it would be like for you if you were in your sixties or seventies today and got pregnant. Would you be joyful? You’d be scared, but she was filled with joy. Mary was at the other end of the spectrum. She was probably in her mid- to late teens. She was pregnant before marriage. Typically a woman in that situation would be quietly dismissed by her fiancé and left to fend for herself. She would also be rejected by her family because of the disgrace she would have brought on them. But she wasn’t scared. She was filled with joy.
Elizabeth, Mary, and Santo all displayed an attitude that is so essential to being a Christian, an attitude that many Christians have a hard time with. We are called to joy, but the problem is that we keep pursuing happiness, and that pursuit gets in the way of our joy. We have all been brought up on the belief of the Declaration of Independence, which says that we all have a right to the pursuit of happiness. And I agree with that belief. But I also know that the pursuit of happiness doesn’t necessarily lead to a sense of joy. There’s a difference between happiness and joy.
What’s the difference? Happiness is brought on by external events. We are happy because of what is going on around us. We are happy when we buy a new car, but as soon as the new car smell goes away, our happiness fades. We are happy when the Steelers or Penguins or Pirates win, but happiness fades if the win wasn’t dominating enough, or till after the next loss. We are happy whenever we get something new, or when something good happens to us, but we aren’t necessarily joyful.
Joy is different. Joy is an internal condition that is a by-product of real faith. We have joy because we sense God with us, and this joy is there no matter what is taking place around us. Joy is something we can feel, even when bad things are taking place. I’m not saying that we are joyful because we are ill, fired from our job, or struggling in our marriage. But we don’t let those things diminish our interior joy for long. Being joyful means that even if someone close to us dies, we can still find good and beauty in life. Being joyful means that even if we become ill, we still find reasons to smile and find what’s good in life around us—the love of others, the abilities of the doctors. Joy comes from within. Happiness comes from without. Joy persists. Happiness is temporary.
Let me give you an example of the difference between the two. Do you remember the Steelers-Buffalo Bills game from two weeks ago? We eventually won in overtime, but it was close. We could have lost. At one point in overtime, the Bills’ young receiver, Stevie Johnson, got free in the end zone. The ball was thrown to him, and he was wide open. The ball hit him right in the hands for an easy catch, but he dropped the ball. He sat dejected in the end zone for a while, and then went on the bench and sulked. Later he tweeted on Twitter the following message to God and his fans: “I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO..”
This is a man who has pursued happiness, but not joy. A joyful person would have recognized that this was just a game, and that he has a lot to be grateful for: having the talent to be a world-class athlete, having the ability to make millions of dollars for catching a football, being cheered on by tens of thousands of fans, and having more opportunities to make game-winning touchdowns. Like Johnson, though, we can confuse happiness and joy.
A mature faith, a faith really rooted in trusting God, being open to God, and serving God, doesn’t depend on events for joy. A mature faith has joy in all circumstances. And it realizes that we face a choice: will we react with joy or something else to life around us? Remember, reacting with joy doesn’t mean ignoring pain. It means having joy in God despite pain, turmoil, struggles, and grief.
Do you pursue happiness in your life, or do you cultivate joy? Your answer makes all the difference in what you experience in life.
Amen.
Candle Messages: Hope
Revelation 21:1-8
November 28, 2010
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
When you’re faced with an obstacle, faced with something that completely gets in your way, how do you respond? When things don’t go your way and you don’t know what to do, what do you do? When your life goes into a difficult time, how do you respond? Do you react cynically or hopefully? Do you tend throw your hands up and say, “See, this is how things always go—I don’t get a break!” Or do you say, in some shape or form, “With God there is always a way”?
How we respond to difficulties determines, to a great extent, how well we see God working in our lives. Tim Zimmerman understood this belief. Zimmerman found that shifting from a cynical to a hopeful perspective can make all the difference in life. A number of years ago, Zimmerman had to work on Thanksgiving Day. He worked for the Maryland State Welfare office, manning the phones, and he was bummed. All morning long, all he could think of was the fact that all his family was together, they were going to be eating soon and watching football, and it bothered him.
Then a phone call came in from a Mrs. B, a woman who was having problems with her EBT card, a credit card issued by the welfare office that acted like food stamps. She said that she had been saving $10 on it from last month so that she could match it with her $10 from this month. She had been saving it so that she could get food for Thanksgiving to have a meal with her children. Now her children couldn’t make it, and she couldn’t access the $10 from the previous month. The store kept telling her that the card was invalid.
It took Zimmerman only a few minutes to figure out what the problem was. Mrs. B. hadn’t realized that the card was only a temporary card, and that it expired at the end of the month, so she had lost her $10. Zimmerman then asked her if she had any food in her apartment. Mrs. B. said, “Not really. I had been trying to save up for Thanksgiving.” Zimmerman, thinking that this was not right, told Mrs. B. that he wanted to make some phone calls to see if he can get her local grocery store to accept credit from the welfare office and deliver food to Mrs. B. He called the grocery store, but they said that they couldn’t take credit over the phone, even from the welfare office, and that they couldn’t deliver anyway because they were short-staffed.
Zimmerman felt overwhelmed at this point, not knowing what to do, but he had hope. He believed that he could find a way. He asked some of his coworkers to join him and to call around to supermarkets in the area. They couldn’t find any that were open. More coworkers joined them, but no matter how many places they called, none were open. Finally, Zimmerman thought to call the Chesapeake Beef Company. He knew the owners, and thought that they would surely be willing to help. Again there was no answer.
They decided to call the owners at home to see if they would be willing to help. The owners, Maria and Stan Wasiliski, answered and listened. Stan told Zimmerman that he couldn’t open the store, but that they had just finished their Thanksgiving dinner, and they had lots of food left over. Mrs. B.’s home was only fifteen miles away. What if they took food from their dinner to her? Their children could make cards, and it would give them a chance to give to others on Thanksgiving. The only thing they asked of Zimmerman was that he call Mrs. B. to let her know they were coming.
Again, there was a glitch. They didn’t actually have Mrs. B.’s phone number on file. They only had a name and an address, and her number was unlisted. So they called the operator, explaining the situation, and asking her to connect them. The operator said that she couldn’t, but that she would call Mrs. B. and ask her to call the welfare office. Finally, it all worked out after she called.
Later that day, Zimmerman received a call from Maria Wasiliski. She said, “It was wonderful. Mrs. B. was so touched by our coming there. She opened and read each card from our children, and afterwards she asked if she could have permission to hug each of them. She had tears in her eyes after each hug. Then she said to us, ‘You know, I’ve been a Christian my whole life, and I’ve prayed, but lately it’s been so hard. I’ve been wondering where God is in all my struggles. I was ready to let go of my faith. But today I really know that God is alive and here with me.’”
When we have hope, anything can happen. The people in the welfare office had hope. They looked for what can happen, rather than at what normally should happen. Instead of giving into cynicism, they gave into hope, and for us Christians, it’s hope that makes all the difference.
The fact is that it is very, very easy to let cynicism run our lives. It’s very, very easy to look at what’s wrong instead of what’s right, to focus on obstacles instead of on how to overcome them. We all do it. We all give in to cynicism. Have you ever found yourself saying to someone else, “Oh, the schools these days! Why can’t teachers care more about teaching than about money!” Or, “Kids these days! We were never like this! They’re all so whiney and helpless.” Or “You can’t get good service anywhere. No one cares about customer service. They’re all in it for themselves!” In fact, cynicism follows a formula: “Oh, the ____ these days! Back in my day, we _____________!”
Frankly, I think the primary problem of our country is our cynicism. All people do is complain about politicians, about liberals and conservatives, about the people in power and replacing them with new people (who we’ll complain about once they get into power). People on the right complain that the country’s going to hell in a hand basket because liberals are running it. Then those on the left complain that if the conservatives get power, they will ruin this country. Those on the right are cynical about those on the left, thinking they are socialists, and those on the left are cynical about those on the right, thinking they are fascists. It’s as though we’ve become so cynical that we think the country can’t actually survive actual democracy. We’re so cynical about democracy that we have no hope in democracy even though we believe in democracy. I guess, though, for Republicans and Democrats, democracy only works when one party rules,… although at that point don’t we become fascist? It’s ironic. We’ve become so cynical that we think that only one party rule can save democracy.
The Christian way is a way that refuses to give in to cynicism about anything. The Christian way always remembers that God’s light shines most in the darkness, and that there’s always hope. Reflect on the Bible stories. The Bible is filled with light in the darkness stories. For example, Joseph was sold into slavery, and then imprisoned, but he rose to greatness, managing to save his family that was suffering from hunger during the great 7 years of drought. Moses was a murderer living in exile in the desert, but he was brought out of exile to lead the Israelites out of the darkness of slavery. The Jews were enslaved twice—in Egypt and in Babylon—but God restored them. The message of the prophets was always that even though bad things were going to happen, God was going to be good to them and bless them if they had faith. The birth of Jesus is a story of hope. And the cross is the ultimate Christian hope story. When Jesus died on the cross, all hope was gone. But people didn’t see what God was actually doing. When Christ was resurrected it showed that God was bringing light to even the darkest times. Our whole faith is built upon having hope when things seem hopeless.
Hope means always having faith, even when it seems like there is no reason for it. It’s being realistic about the way things are, but also believing that if we are patient, God will respond to our prayer. Hope means knowing that behind the scenes God is doing stuff to make things better, but we don’t know what. It means believing that even though things seem bleak, God is doing something unexpected to make things right.
Let me give you a metaphor for what I’m talking about. A few years ago a father in Scotland called his son in London several days before Christmas Eve. He sounded so sad and angry. He said to his son, "I hate to ruin your day but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing. Forty-five years of misery is enough!"
"Dad, what are you talking about?'" the son screamed. “How can you get divorced now after a lifetime together?”
"We can't stand the sight of each other any longer", he said. "We're sick of each other and I'm sick of talking about this. You call your sister in Leeds and tell her. I don’t have the stomach for it.”
Frantically, the son called his sister, who exploded on the phone, saying, "Like hell they're getting divorced! I'll take care of this.”
She called Scotland immediately and screamed at her father, "You are NOT getting divorced. Don't do a single thing until I get there. I'm calling my brother back and we'll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don't do a thing. DO YOU HEAR ME?" She then hung up.
The old man hung up his phone, turned to his wife, and said. "Done! They're coming for Christmas. And they're paying their own way."
Not to use too cynical a joke, but this is the way God works, too. God does things that we think mean God is acting one way, but in the end we find out that God was doing something completely different. We lose hope because we can’t see what God is doing behind the scenes. But if we are willing to hope, we will discover that what God is doing is so much more than we ever expect.
Advent is a celebration of hope, of believing that good things can come out of bad, that in the darkest times a spark of light is always present. It celebrates that if you hold fast to God, have faith, and be patient, good things are going to happen.
Amen.
Parable Wisdom: 3. Humbly Exalted
Luke 18:9-14
November 21, 2010
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Do you have a favorite commercial? I do. And right now my favorite commercial is the one about the most Interesting man in the world. You know those commercials for Dos Equis beer? The main character in the commercials is an older man, surrounded by younger women, who is declared to be “the most interesting man in the world.” You see scenes from earlier in his life when he did amazing things. For example, in one scene an Eskimo is ice fishing, in the process of cutting out a hole in the ice. As he removes a circular cutaway of ice, out of the water emerges the most interesting man, holding three large fish. Then, in another scene you see the most interesting man halfway rapelling down a cliff on the side of a mountain, in order to nurse young eagle chicks with a dropper of milk. Then you see him lying in bed, suturing his own nasty wound, while smiling and carrying on a conversation with women and the doctor. Then you see him sitting with a queen, with both laughing after he has played a prank on her. He is declared, “the most interesting man in the world, a man whose mother has a tattoo on her shoulder that says, ‘son.’”
I love those commercials so much that when I see them on television. I often call my wife in to watch. But I’ve been wondering this week: what if they created a commercial starring “the most humble man in the world?” Would anyone be interested? Who would watch? I don’t think many of us would, but I know that God would. And I suspect that God would call in all the angels, and say, “Hey, guys,… that commercial is on again! Come and see!”
What would the most humble man in the world be like? I know of a few, and they are unique and special. For example, I met John in Oregon two springs ago. The pastor I worked with as an associate pastor right after seminary, Jack Hodges, retired several years ago after a distinguished career, culminating in being the executive presbyter of Cascades Presbytery. He just didn’t have it in him to sit around, so he decided to become a part-time pastor of a dying, inner-city, Portland church. I think that when he got there they had about 30 members, and within two years he had grown it to about 48 members. John was a member of that church. Every Sunday morning he got up to make coffee for the members of the church. Jack introduced me and said, “Graham, this is John. He makes the best coffee in any church in the world. He is a great man.” John smiled as he heard Jack say this. As we walked away, Jack said to me, “John really is a wonderful man. He’s had a hard life, yet he is always cheerful, and always willing to do anything to help. It doesn’t matter how small the job is. He does everything with a smile. He gets up early every Sunday morning, and it’s important to him to come to church and make coffee for everyone. He takes really great pleasure in doing it.” John is one of the most humble men in the world.
Another “most humble man in the world” is Darold Holliday. Like John, Darold has not had an easy life. He barely knows his parents, two people where were far too busy living the lives of drug addicts on the streets of Pittsburgh to raise their child. Darold was sent to his grandparents, who loved him dearly. Yet his grandfather died when he was seven, and his grandmother when he was twelve. He then was raised by elderly neighbors. He was diagnosed with Type I diabetes as a child. The condition meant that he has had to take insulin injections most of his life. The combination of the disease and the insulin shots destroyed his pancreas and kidneys. He has had to have transplants for all of them. Eventually, the pancreas was rejected, and even now he is fights the rejection of his kidney. Despite his physical struggles, nothing has kept him from bearing fruit. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons he volunteers with kindergartners and first-graders at Lemington Elementary School in Pittsburgh. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings he volunteers at the Arsenal Middle School. He also works with teens and youth in the afternoon recreation program sponsored by East End Cooperative Ministries. And he volunteers in the youth program of his own church, Good Shepherd Baptist Church. In addition, he is part of Ameri-Corps, the national volunteer agency. Despite all of his struggles, he has made serving God and caring for others a priority in his life. As a result, East End Cooperative Ministries (a conglomeration of over 45 Pittsburgh congregations that run a homeless shelter, programs to help the homeless reintegrate into life, tutoring programs for at-risk children, health clinics, and more) awarded him Volunteer of the Year in 2003. He is one of those “most humble men in the world.”
The fact is that these humble people don’t garner that much attention because humility as a virtue goes against so much of what we value in modern American life. Other virtues work better, virtues like faithfulness, generosity, and self-control. They work because they contribute to the American life of working hard, making money, and achieving success. Humility, gets the short shrift because it’s not a virtue that produces things we care about in our culture, where power, popularity, and wealth mean everything. Think about it. Nobody becomes popular or powerful by being humble. No one typically gains great wealth through being humble. No one garners great attention by being humble. But what you do gain is immeasurable from God’s perspective
The interesting thing about our passage is that it actually goes against the common beliefs about what saves us. If I were to quote Romans 3 and say that we are justified by ____ through ____, would you be able to fill in the blanks? Most Christians would be able, saying “by grace through faith.” According to our passage, it’s not grace or faith that leads to salvation but humility. To recognize it you have to understand that the words “justification,” “righteousness,” and “salvation are basically interchangeable. This parable tells us that the tax collector goes home justified, the tax collector goes home “saved.” And it’s humility that saves him.
So this morning I want to dig a bit deeper into what it means to be humble, and I want to make you work on thinking about how humble you are. I’m going to ask you to read the following quotes, and reflect on them. Ask the question, what do these teachings tell me about humility and how I can become more humble in my life.
From Thomas Kelly’s, A Testament of Devotion, we hear, “Humility does not rest, in final count, upon bafflement and discouragement and self-disgust at our shabby lives, a brow-beaten, dog-slinking attitude. It rests upon the disclosure of the consummate wonder of God, upon finding that only God counts, that all our own self-originated intentions are works of straw. And so in lowly humility we must stick close to the Root and count our own powers as nothing except that they are enslaved in His power.”
And from the 14th Century Roman Catholic writer, Thomas á Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ, we hear, “Everyone naturally wishes to have knowledge, but what good is great learning unless it is accompanied by a feeling of deep awe and profound reverence toward God? Indeed, a humble farmer who serves God is better than a proud philosopher, who neglecting himself, contemplates the course of the heavens. The person who truly knows himself seems common in his own eyes...
“If you want to learn something that will really help you, learn to see yourself as God sees you and not as you see yourself in the distorted mirror of your own self-importance. This is the greatest and most useful lesson we can learn: to know ourselves for what we truly are, to admit freely our weaknesses and failings, and to hold a humble opinion of ourselves because of them. Not to dwell on ourselves and always to think well and highly of others is great wisdom and perfection.”
As we close, reflect on this simple question. What would you need to do to become humbler in your life?
Amen.
The Celtic Way
November 14, 2010
John 1:1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Colossians 1:15-20
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
I don’t’ know if you are aware of this, but for a lot of years Bruce Smith, our music and youth director, has had a crusade. He has wanted to rename our church. And he has reasons for that. You see, Calvin Presbyterian Church wasn’t always called Calvin Presbyterian Church. Until February 22, 1959, our name was Harmony-Zelienople Presbyterian Church. In the late 1950s two Presbyterian denominations merged, one that our church was a part of, and another that Park Presbyterian Church was part of. The Presbytery didn’t think that it was right for our church to have the name “Harmony-Zelienople” in it, so it told the church to rename itself. According to Bruce and others, our name wasn’t chosen by the congregation, but by the presbytery. So in February of 1959, we were renamed Calvin Presbyterian Church.
I don’t know how much energy I have for taking up the fight to rename our church, but if I have a vote in the issue, I would rename us Celtic Presbyterian Church. Why? Because I think that the name “Celtic” really describes not only my approach to Christian faith, but also the approach that I know most of our members and staff have. Just speaking personally, I’ve found it interesting that over the years I’ve been thoroughly Celtic in my Christianity, but I only came to realize the fact in the past few months. For years I’ve filled my home, my office, and even adorned myself with Celtic symbols, and listened to a ton of Celtic music, but I’ve never known why the Celtic approach to faith and life have been so important to me. And it’s not just me. Look around Calvin Church. We have Celtic symbols everywhere, from the cross at the front of our church, to our church logo, to the Celtic crosses adoring the walls of our sanctuary, to the pictures of Celtic crosses from Ireland and Scotland that you can find in our office hallway and conference room. So much of who and what we are is Celtic. A lot may have to do with the fact that Presbyterians have a Scottish, and thus Celtic heritage, but more has to do with our perspective on Christian faith.
I’m not alone in having a love of all things Celtic. Many of us do, without even knowing it. For example, look at how prevalent Celtic symbols are in jewelry. Many people love Celtic crosses and knotworks (the intertwined threads that you see in so much of jewelry). Celtic art, with its flourishes intertwined with scenes of nature, if very popular. Many love Celtic music. In fact, where would PBS be without Celtic Woman, Celtic Thunder, the Celtic Tenors, Riverdance, and more. There’s even a worldwide love of Celtic brews such as Guinness, Harp, Irish Whiskey, and Scotch.
What it is about the Celtic way that has captured so many people? I’ve wondered what it was that captured me. It’s only been in the past few months that I finally figured it out. I figured it out because I’ve been studying Celtic faith and spirituality for the past six months.
So what is Celtic Christianity? It is a theology and spirituality that formed in the British Isles out of their love of nature. The Celtic people have always had a love of nature, and have always had a sense of their being something spiritual about nature. They had a deep connection with nature before Christianity came to Ireland and Scotland, and that love made its way into their understanding of Christianity. The Celtic Christians believed very much in being scriptural—in basing their faith in the Bible—but they also believed that God could be discovered through nature. They believed that Scripture taught our minds about God, but the nature taught our hearts to see God. They believed that we can experience God in the stories of the Bible, but also in a beautiful sunset, the wind blowing over grains of wheat, and in the rain that makes everything grow.
As a result of this love of nature, and of sensing God’s presence in nature, they gravitated toward Bible passages that also expressed God’s presence in nature. For example, the passages that we read for today talk of Jesus as being the actual power of Creation, and how everything came into being in and through him. They recognized the love of nature in Jesus as he went off into the wilderness for forty days and nights, being led by the Holy Spirit. They recognized the love of nature in many of Jesus’ parables, where he used sowing seeds, sheep, fish, and other aspects of nature to describe the ways of God. They saw Christ’s love of nature in the fact that when he needed to be with the Father he went off to a lonely place to pray, and on the night he was arrested he went into a garden to pray. They also really emphasized John’s gospel, which is the one that most connects God with nature. You see, in John’s gospel Jesus uses phrases such as “I am the vine and you are the branches,” as well as making use of images from shepherding and fishing. And John also emphasizes how Christ is God’s incarnation in the world.
By the way, the Celts aren’t the only ones in Christianity to emphasize how nature reveals God’s presence. St. Francis also had a love of nature, living most of his adult life in the woods and fields. The Rhineland mystics of Germany used nature images to express their love of God, as did the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhardt. The Desert Fathers and Mothers of the fourth and fifth centuries lived in the deserts of Egypt, doing so in order to more fully experience God, which they found difficult in the cities.
The Celts did not believe that nature was God, nor that we should worship nature. Instead, they recognized that God created all of nature, and that God’s presence could be experienced through our connection with nature. You can see their awareness of God in nature through their prayers, such as this famous prayer, attributed to St. Patrick, called St. Patrick’s Breastplate:
We arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.
You can also discover this love of nature reflected in Celtic symbols. Do you know what the circle in the Celtic cross stands for? Often it is said that it stands for the Holy Spirit, or the fact that God is the alpha and the omega, or that with God there is not beginning or no end. But the most simple meaning is that the Celtic cross integrated the sign of the circle, which for the Celts stood for the sun, which they believed was the root of all life. The Celtic cross has a symbol of nature in it. Also, listen to Celtic music and hymns, and see how nature is reflected in it. For example, listen to the words of “Morning Has Broken,” “When Morning Gilds the Skies,” “Let All Things Now Living,” and “Be Thou My Vision.” All of them reflect the fact that while God isn’t nature, God can be sensed and embraced through nature.
The fact is that the Celtic way of faith has had a hard time of it in Christianity. Much of Christian faith developed in urban areas, rather than in rural areas (even though much of Jesus’ teachings took place in rural, rather than urban, areas). Because much of Christian thought throughout the centuries developed in urban areas, where people often have a distrust and fear of nature, the Celtic way has sometimes been seen as a threat. You can see how this threat created a rift in Christianity in the battles between two Christians of history—one infamous and one famous. Back in the fifth century there was a battle for the soul of Christianity between an urban and a Celtic faith. These were the battles between Pelagius and Augustine, and Augustine won. Since then the writings of Pelagius have mostly been lost. And a heresy was attributed to Pelagius, called pelagianism, which is the doctrine that we must work our way into heaven through good deeds. I agree that this perspective is a heresy, and that it goes completely against Christ’s teachings. But there is a lingering question of whether Pelagius ever really taught this belief. The only witness we have to this is Augustine. The writings we do have from Pelagius say no such thing, and in fact seem to suggest that Pelagius believed that our salvation was only due to grace.
Pelagius was originally from northern Britain. His father, it is believed, had been a Druid priest, which is a faith that worships nature. So you can see how love of nature came into Pelagius’ beliefs. Pelagius taught a theology that emphasized God’s grace and goodness in the world. He taught that we should emphasize God’s goodness in the world because God created everything and declared it good, including humans. He believed that sin was a power in the world, and that it was a darkness that could dominate God’s goodness in us, but that it does not have the power to overcome it. For Pelagius, the focus of faith should be on following Christ so that grace can grow and sin be diminished. But the starting point was always grace, not sin. Ultimately, for Pelagius the key is that we are created in the image of God, so it’s that image in us that should be emphasized, not sin.
Augustine had a very different point of view, one that reflects his background. He was born of a Christian mother and a pagan father, and early on Augustine followed the path of his father. He eventually became a Manichean, which was a popular faith throughout the Roman Empire. The Manichean faith believed that there was a division in life between good and evil, the spiritual and the material, and heaven and earth. It taught that we live in a thoroughly corrupt world, and that only heaven was good. All of us are corrupt since we live in the world. The only redemption came if we could learn secrets that raised our minds and spirits toward divinity, even if we remain in corrupt bodies.
Augustine eventually left that Manichean faith to become Christian, and he rose to become a very powerful bishop in the early church (a church that had become powerful since its being declared the faith of the Empire seventy years earlier). He may have become a Christian, but he brought with him a Manichean theology. He still saw divisions between good and evil everywhere, and he is the one who most emphasized the Fall of Humanity because of Original Sin. He believed that while God declared all of life good, our sin caused a fall that made us and the world totally depraved and sinful. For Augustine, there is absolutely nothing good about us except God’s grace within us. For him, sin has the power to completely overwhelm us and drive us away from God. He believed that coming to Christ could overcome our sin, but that sin was the power of the material world. He even went so far to say that it was because of sin that there is death in the world, both human and animal (and perhaps even in plants). Our original sin brought death into the world.
Augustine saw Pelagius’ beliefs as a threat. Throughout his adult life he waged a battle against Pelagius, brining him up on charges of heresy. There were many trials against Pelagius, and in almost every case Pelagius was declared holy and admirable by different popes. Late in life Augustine got his way, and Pelagius was declared a heretic, as was pelagianism. And if Pelagius taught that our good deeds save us, I agree with Augustine. But, as I said before, we have no writings from Pelagius that state this anywhere. Instead, what we do have shows the writings of a man who was very much rooted in the gospels, especially John’s gospel. Ironically, throughout his life, Augustine even declared his admiration for Pelagius, calling him a holy man.
Even though Augustine’s theology and understanding of the Gospel won in Rome, it never quite got stamped out in Britain, Ireland, and Scotland. You can see the power of the Celtic faith first in the world of St. Patrick. St. Patrick was an Angle (the root word of English) who was captured as a teen to become a slave of the pre-Christian Celts for nine years. Patrick lived out in nature for nine years, and was heavily influenced by the Celtic vision of life. After he escaped, he became a priest, and brought Christianity to the Celts, a Christianity that was already thoroughly Celtic. After he died, some disciples of his movement, in the 500s, went to Scotland and converted it to a Celtic Christianity. The leader of that group was an Irishman named St. Columba. One of St. Columba’s Scottish disciples, St. Aidan, took this Celtic form of Christianity into northern England, bringing Christianity back to England, where it had been abandoned once the Roman army left, and the Saxons began invading England. So an Englishman converted Ireland, an Irishman converted Scotland, and a Scot reconverted England.
You can see the influence of Celtic faith still in the British Isles. You can see it in the British love of gardens and nature, of the many parks you find in the large cities of Scotland, Ireland, and England. And you see the influence in the writings of many great British writers, including C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. The Augustinian vision of Christianity has been very powerful, influencing great Christians such as Luther, Calvin, and others, but they have not stamped out the alternative vision that the Celtic way of faith presents, a way that I know I ascribe to.
As an ending to this sermon, I want you to do something to emulate the way we ended this sermon in worship. We ended this sermon with a slideshow of nature, accompanied by a beautiful rendition of “Be Thou My Vision,” sung by guest musicians, Sandi and Jerry Rectenwald. Obviously I can’t recreate that in writing, but I can give you an assignment. Today, take a walk out in nature. Look at the skies, look at the trees, look at the grass. I don’t care what season you are in. Look around, and see if you can sense God’s presence. If you can, you’ll know that you are Celtic.
Amen.
John 1:1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Colossians 1:15-20
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
I don’t’ know if you are aware of this, but for a lot of years Bruce Smith, our music and youth director, has had a crusade. He has wanted to rename our church. And he has reasons for that. You see, Calvin Presbyterian Church wasn’t always called Calvin Presbyterian Church. Until February 22, 1959, our name was Harmony-Zelienople Presbyterian Church. In the late 1950s two Presbyterian denominations merged, one that our church was a part of, and another that Park Presbyterian Church was part of. The Presbytery didn’t think that it was right for our church to have the name “Harmony-Zelienople” in it, so it told the church to rename itself. According to Bruce and others, our name wasn’t chosen by the congregation, but by the presbytery. So in February of 1959, we were renamed Calvin Presbyterian Church.
I don’t know how much energy I have for taking up the fight to rename our church, but if I have a vote in the issue, I would rename us Celtic Presbyterian Church. Why? Because I think that the name “Celtic” really describes not only my approach to Christian faith, but also the approach that I know most of our members and staff have. Just speaking personally, I’ve found it interesting that over the years I’ve been thoroughly Celtic in my Christianity, but I only came to realize the fact in the past few months. For years I’ve filled my home, my office, and even adorned myself with Celtic symbols, and listened to a ton of Celtic music, but I’ve never known why the Celtic approach to faith and life have been so important to me. And it’s not just me. Look around Calvin Church. We have Celtic symbols everywhere, from the cross at the front of our church, to our church logo, to the Celtic crosses adoring the walls of our sanctuary, to the pictures of Celtic crosses from Ireland and Scotland that you can find in our office hallway and conference room. So much of who and what we are is Celtic. A lot may have to do with the fact that Presbyterians have a Scottish, and thus Celtic heritage, but more has to do with our perspective on Christian faith.
I’m not alone in having a love of all things Celtic. Many of us do, without even knowing it. For example, look at how prevalent Celtic symbols are in jewelry. Many people love Celtic crosses and knotworks (the intertwined threads that you see in so much of jewelry). Celtic art, with its flourishes intertwined with scenes of nature, if very popular. Many love Celtic music. In fact, where would PBS be without Celtic Woman, Celtic Thunder, the Celtic Tenors, Riverdance, and more. There’s even a worldwide love of Celtic brews such as Guinness, Harp, Irish Whiskey, and Scotch.
What it is about the Celtic way that has captured so many people? I’ve wondered what it was that captured me. It’s only been in the past few months that I finally figured it out. I figured it out because I’ve been studying Celtic faith and spirituality for the past six months.
So what is Celtic Christianity? It is a theology and spirituality that formed in the British Isles out of their love of nature. The Celtic people have always had a love of nature, and have always had a sense of their being something spiritual about nature. They had a deep connection with nature before Christianity came to Ireland and Scotland, and that love made its way into their understanding of Christianity. The Celtic Christians believed very much in being scriptural—in basing their faith in the Bible—but they also believed that God could be discovered through nature. They believed that Scripture taught our minds about God, but the nature taught our hearts to see God. They believed that we can experience God in the stories of the Bible, but also in a beautiful sunset, the wind blowing over grains of wheat, and in the rain that makes everything grow.
As a result of this love of nature, and of sensing God’s presence in nature, they gravitated toward Bible passages that also expressed God’s presence in nature. For example, the passages that we read for today talk of Jesus as being the actual power of Creation, and how everything came into being in and through him. They recognized the love of nature in Jesus as he went off into the wilderness for forty days and nights, being led by the Holy Spirit. They recognized the love of nature in many of Jesus’ parables, where he used sowing seeds, sheep, fish, and other aspects of nature to describe the ways of God. They saw Christ’s love of nature in the fact that when he needed to be with the Father he went off to a lonely place to pray, and on the night he was arrested he went into a garden to pray. They also really emphasized John’s gospel, which is the one that most connects God with nature. You see, in John’s gospel Jesus uses phrases such as “I am the vine and you are the branches,” as well as making use of images from shepherding and fishing. And John also emphasizes how Christ is God’s incarnation in the world.
By the way, the Celts aren’t the only ones in Christianity to emphasize how nature reveals God’s presence. St. Francis also had a love of nature, living most of his adult life in the woods and fields. The Rhineland mystics of Germany used nature images to express their love of God, as did the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhardt. The Desert Fathers and Mothers of the fourth and fifth centuries lived in the deserts of Egypt, doing so in order to more fully experience God, which they found difficult in the cities.
The Celts did not believe that nature was God, nor that we should worship nature. Instead, they recognized that God created all of nature, and that God’s presence could be experienced through our connection with nature. You can see their awareness of God in nature through their prayers, such as this famous prayer, attributed to St. Patrick, called St. Patrick’s Breastplate:
We arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.
You can also discover this love of nature reflected in Celtic symbols. Do you know what the circle in the Celtic cross stands for? Often it is said that it stands for the Holy Spirit, or the fact that God is the alpha and the omega, or that with God there is not beginning or no end. But the most simple meaning is that the Celtic cross integrated the sign of the circle, which for the Celts stood for the sun, which they believed was the root of all life. The Celtic cross has a symbol of nature in it. Also, listen to Celtic music and hymns, and see how nature is reflected in it. For example, listen to the words of “Morning Has Broken,” “When Morning Gilds the Skies,” “Let All Things Now Living,” and “Be Thou My Vision.” All of them reflect the fact that while God isn’t nature, God can be sensed and embraced through nature.
The fact is that the Celtic way of faith has had a hard time of it in Christianity. Much of Christian faith developed in urban areas, rather than in rural areas (even though much of Jesus’ teachings took place in rural, rather than urban, areas). Because much of Christian thought throughout the centuries developed in urban areas, where people often have a distrust and fear of nature, the Celtic way has sometimes been seen as a threat. You can see how this threat created a rift in Christianity in the battles between two Christians of history—one infamous and one famous. Back in the fifth century there was a battle for the soul of Christianity between an urban and a Celtic faith. These were the battles between Pelagius and Augustine, and Augustine won. Since then the writings of Pelagius have mostly been lost. And a heresy was attributed to Pelagius, called pelagianism, which is the doctrine that we must work our way into heaven through good deeds. I agree that this perspective is a heresy, and that it goes completely against Christ’s teachings. But there is a lingering question of whether Pelagius ever really taught this belief. The only witness we have to this is Augustine. The writings we do have from Pelagius say no such thing, and in fact seem to suggest that Pelagius believed that our salvation was only due to grace.
Pelagius was originally from northern Britain. His father, it is believed, had been a Druid priest, which is a faith that worships nature. So you can see how love of nature came into Pelagius’ beliefs. Pelagius taught a theology that emphasized God’s grace and goodness in the world. He taught that we should emphasize God’s goodness in the world because God created everything and declared it good, including humans. He believed that sin was a power in the world, and that it was a darkness that could dominate God’s goodness in us, but that it does not have the power to overcome it. For Pelagius, the focus of faith should be on following Christ so that grace can grow and sin be diminished. But the starting point was always grace, not sin. Ultimately, for Pelagius the key is that we are created in the image of God, so it’s that image in us that should be emphasized, not sin.
Augustine had a very different point of view, one that reflects his background. He was born of a Christian mother and a pagan father, and early on Augustine followed the path of his father. He eventually became a Manichean, which was a popular faith throughout the Roman Empire. The Manichean faith believed that there was a division in life between good and evil, the spiritual and the material, and heaven and earth. It taught that we live in a thoroughly corrupt world, and that only heaven was good. All of us are corrupt since we live in the world. The only redemption came if we could learn secrets that raised our minds and spirits toward divinity, even if we remain in corrupt bodies.
Augustine eventually left that Manichean faith to become Christian, and he rose to become a very powerful bishop in the early church (a church that had become powerful since its being declared the faith of the Empire seventy years earlier). He may have become a Christian, but he brought with him a Manichean theology. He still saw divisions between good and evil everywhere, and he is the one who most emphasized the Fall of Humanity because of Original Sin. He believed that while God declared all of life good, our sin caused a fall that made us and the world totally depraved and sinful. For Augustine, there is absolutely nothing good about us except God’s grace within us. For him, sin has the power to completely overwhelm us and drive us away from God. He believed that coming to Christ could overcome our sin, but that sin was the power of the material world. He even went so far to say that it was because of sin that there is death in the world, both human and animal (and perhaps even in plants). Our original sin brought death into the world.
Augustine saw Pelagius’ beliefs as a threat. Throughout his adult life he waged a battle against Pelagius, brining him up on charges of heresy. There were many trials against Pelagius, and in almost every case Pelagius was declared holy and admirable by different popes. Late in life Augustine got his way, and Pelagius was declared a heretic, as was pelagianism. And if Pelagius taught that our good deeds save us, I agree with Augustine. But, as I said before, we have no writings from Pelagius that state this anywhere. Instead, what we do have shows the writings of a man who was very much rooted in the gospels, especially John’s gospel. Ironically, throughout his life, Augustine even declared his admiration for Pelagius, calling him a holy man.
Even though Augustine’s theology and understanding of the Gospel won in Rome, it never quite got stamped out in Britain, Ireland, and Scotland. You can see the power of the Celtic faith first in the world of St. Patrick. St. Patrick was an Angle (the root word of English) who was captured as a teen to become a slave of the pre-Christian Celts for nine years. Patrick lived out in nature for nine years, and was heavily influenced by the Celtic vision of life. After he escaped, he became a priest, and brought Christianity to the Celts, a Christianity that was already thoroughly Celtic. After he died, some disciples of his movement, in the 500s, went to Scotland and converted it to a Celtic Christianity. The leader of that group was an Irishman named St. Columba. One of St. Columba’s Scottish disciples, St. Aidan, took this Celtic form of Christianity into northern England, bringing Christianity back to England, where it had been abandoned once the Roman army left, and the Saxons began invading England. So an Englishman converted Ireland, an Irishman converted Scotland, and a Scot reconverted England.
You can see the influence of Celtic faith still in the British Isles. You can see it in the British love of gardens and nature, of the many parks you find in the large cities of Scotland, Ireland, and England. And you see the influence in the writings of many great British writers, including C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. The Augustinian vision of Christianity has been very powerful, influencing great Christians such as Luther, Calvin, and others, but they have not stamped out the alternative vision that the Celtic way of faith presents, a way that I know I ascribe to.
As an ending to this sermon, I want you to do something to emulate the way we ended this sermon in worship. We ended this sermon with a slideshow of nature, accompanied by a beautiful rendition of “Be Thou My Vision,” sung by guest musicians, Sandi and Jerry Rectenwald. Obviously I can’t recreate that in writing, but I can give you an assignment. Today, take a walk out in nature. Look at the skies, look at the trees, look at the grass. I don’t care what season you are in. Look around, and see if you can sense God’s presence. If you can, you’ll know that you are Celtic.
Amen.
Parable Wisdom: 2. First and Last
Matthew 20:1-16
October 24, 2010
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
A number of years ago there were twin brothers who both went to a good college to learn business. Both got good grades, and both were inundated with job offers upon graduation. During their senior years, both sensed a call from God to devote their lives to God in their work and lives. Both felt committed to work in business, and this call was to make their work, their earnings, and everything else part of their service to God.
The first brother heard the call and made a pledge to serve God in everything he would do throughout his life. And he did so. He became a missionary, serving God in all sorts of far-flung, and often dangerous, places. Eventually, because of his work among the poor, he was arrested, beaten, and killed.
The second brother also heard the call, but he didn’t respond so whole-heartedly. He started his own business, and was wildly successful. Unfortunately, he wasn’t always as ethical a Christian as he could have been in his business dealings. Still, he tried. He made a tremendous amount of money, and gave a little bit of it to charity when he thought about it. He lived a good life, although he had the potential to serve God in so many other ways.
When the first brother died, he appeared before Jesus, and Jesus said to him, “Well done, my good and faithful service. I gave you ten talents, and you turned them into 1000 talents. Receive your reward. Here are billion, billion talents.” To the second brother he said, “Well done, my good and faithful service. I gave you ten talents, and you turned them into twenty talents. Receive your reward. Here are billion, billion talents.”
The first brother was shocked at first to see that Jesus had rewarded the second brother the same as him. But after thinking a bit, he turned to Jesus and said, “My Lord, seeing that I served you so much during my life in comparison to my brother, and seeing that we both received the same reward in the end, if I had it all to do over again, I would have done it exactly the same. Thank you.”
I love this story because it really speaks to what I believe is the nature of grace.
It speaks to what God is like, but also to what mature love is like. And it speaks to the heart of our parable. Our parable this morning teaches a really important lesson, which is that no matter when we turn to God, God is always ready to take us in. But like everything Jesus teaches in the parables, there is more than one lesson to learn.
All of us have grown up hearing the parables of Jesus, but most of us don’t really understand the nature of the parables. Why did Jesus teach in parables, and what makes them different from stories? Parables are stories, but they are wisdom stories. Their intent is to teach people how to live more wisely in their lives. Also, parables are always based on everyday observations. When Jesus told his parables, he was telling people things based on what they saw everyday, or at least experienced often in their lives. He used farming, shepherding, weddings, the marketplace, and the Temple as his settings. If he were alive today, he might use the grocery store, the neighborhood, being stuck in traffic, or watching sports as the topics of his parables. Although we are very used to parables, the fact that we are 2000 years, and over 4000 miles separated from the setting for them makes it hard for us to really appreciate the depth of these parables. The fact is that we don’t understand ancient Middle Eastern everyday events, and that gets in the way of our understanding the parables.
This parable is teaching a lot more than meets the eye. At first glance this just seems to be a parable about the nature of getting into heaven. We think that perhaps it’s about making conversion at last minute or last minute confessions so that we can get into heaven. To understand the parable, we have to learn more about it. So to help you, let me give you the background of the parable.
The parable takes place in what was a common daily scene in ancient Middle Eastern towns. The time of year is September. How do we know? We know because the vineyard owner is looking for laborers to bring in the harvest. In ancient Middle Eastern culture, the production of wine was not only big business, but an important part of life. You see, people didn’t drink much water in those days. They drank wine. They would mix wine with water. The alcohol in the wine killed the germs in the water. No one back then considered water to be a healthy drink because it was filthy. It was clean enough to wash clothers or hands, but not to drink. But it was okay once wine was mixed with it. So the wine harvest was crucial not just to wine drinkers, but to everyday living.
There was a rush, though. Once the October rains came mold could form on the grapes and ruin the wine. So the vineyard owner had to hire enough laborers to get it all in. Typically he would go to the marketplace where the poorest of the poor would gather every morning. In many ways, these people were lower than slaves. At least slaves didn’t have to worry about where their next meal was coming from, or about having a roof over their heads. These day laborers had no steady job. They were at the mercy of landowners. Typically they were paid a daily wage that kept them at a basic subsistence level. The failure to be hired for that day could mean the difference between a man’s family eating that day or not.
So the vineyard owner would go to the marketplace and begin choosing workers at about 6 a.m. He would assess their work around 9 a.m., and if they didn’t seem to be working fast enough, he would go back to the marketplace and hire more workers. He would assess again at noon, 3 p.m., and 5 p.m. Each person he would hire would be paid a reduced rate of 4/5ths, 3/5ths, 2/5ths, and 1/5th of a daily wage. That was common business practice. The laborers would stand in the marketplace all day waiting for the vineyard owner to come back and hire them, hoping to make some money.
In our parable, the vineyard owner does everything a normal businessman does, except at the end of the day. He pays those who had worked 12 hours a day’s wage. Then he pays those who had worked 9 hours a day’s wage. He then paid those who had worked for 6 hours a day’s wage. Those who worked for 3 hours he paid a day’s wage, and those who worked one hour he paid a day’s wage. The laborers who worked 12 ours were outraged. This was so unfair! But the vineyard owner, who is now seen as somewhat of a fool—although we know him as a “holy” fool—tells the laborer, “What business of it is of yours if I pay the others a day wage? You got a day’s wage. Be happy with what you have, but also be happy for the others, too, because I was generous and they will eat well tomorrow.”
If it were to take place today, where do you think it would take place? It would probably take place in California, and the laborers would be immigrants, legal or otherwise.
Knowing all this allows the parable to come more alive. While there a many, many lessons we can draw from this parable, let me share three of them with you—three lessons that take us deeper than just lessons about making deathbed confessions.
First, this passage is a warning to Jews about the Gentiles, and to Jesus’ followers about new Christians. To the Jews, he was saying that a time was coming soon when Gentiles would join the Jews as God’s chosen people. The Jews had been God’s chosen for a long time, and they had enjoyed all of God’s benefits in God’s vineyard, God’s kingdom. But God was about to call others whom the Jews saw as unfit, and God was going to invite them into the kingdom. The Jews would complain, but God’s answer would still be, “What are you complaining about? I have given you everything you’ve deserved. I’ve treated you well. What business is it of yours if I also treat the Gentiles well?”
There is also a warning to us. There are many Christians among us who are not all that accepting of newer Christians, or at least not to newer members of our churches. I don’t think this is a problem for members of Calvin Church because we’ve always been good at integrating in members who want to be part of the life of Calvin Church. For instance, we’ve called people to be elders who have been members for 25 years, but also those who have only been members for 2 years. Length of membership and service is not a prerequisite for being a full part of Calvin Presbyterian Church. But for many, there are stepping stones and roadblocks put before people, whether it is glaring at others who might sit in our pews, or expecting newer, younger members to defer to our wishes when it comes to worship and music. I remember once hearing the member of a small church say that a particular person was not really eligible to be an elder in his church because she was still a new member—after fifteen years of being a member! The point is that we are called to celebrate the fact that God cares just as much for those who are new in our midst as about us. The warning is that we need to be just as welcoming.
Second, the parable is about God’s compassion. It tells of God’s love towards all. It doesn’t matter when we turn to God, or even that we completely turn to God. God loves us all equally. God cares for those who have been Christians for a long time, and for those who have only been Christians for a short time. All of us will receive an abundance of God’s grace because that’s the nature of God. God has so much to give, and God is willing to give it all to us. It is important for us to be ready to receive it, though. Just as the laborers had to show up in the marketplace, we need to show up to receive the abundance of grace God has to offer.
The third message is about God’s Economy. We don’t normally think about the idea that God has an economic system, but God does. We think in terms of Capitalism or Communism or socialism, but God has an economic plan that we might call Godism. Basically, it’s a free-market system based on generosity. While Capitalism is based on building profits for our own sake, God’s economy is about using profits for other people’s sake.
Our passage tells us that while God does care about harvesting grapes and producing wine, and about the wealthy vineyard owner, it also says that God cares about the impoverished day laborers. God isn’t just content to say that because they are unskilled and haven’t worked hard enough to better themselves, they deserve what they get. Jesus is saying that God cares deeply about their welfare, enough to be generous with them even when to do so seems to make God seem like a business fool.
God’s economy is one built on generosity. And it’s an economy that we are called to be part of. It means taking seriously the call to give, not just out our abundance, but out of everything we have. We are called to be generous, especially with those who are poor, hungry, homeless, and the like. We are called to hear God’s warning to us to be compassionate, and to live under God’s economy. We are called to give to the church—to be generous in supporting God’s work in the world—because God is generous with us. And we are called to live lives steeped in God’s generosity.
So, as you listen to his parable, what lessons do you hear, and are you willing to apply them to your life.
Amen.
October 24, 2010
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
A number of years ago there were twin brothers who both went to a good college to learn business. Both got good grades, and both were inundated with job offers upon graduation. During their senior years, both sensed a call from God to devote their lives to God in their work and lives. Both felt committed to work in business, and this call was to make their work, their earnings, and everything else part of their service to God.
The first brother heard the call and made a pledge to serve God in everything he would do throughout his life. And he did so. He became a missionary, serving God in all sorts of far-flung, and often dangerous, places. Eventually, because of his work among the poor, he was arrested, beaten, and killed.
The second brother also heard the call, but he didn’t respond so whole-heartedly. He started his own business, and was wildly successful. Unfortunately, he wasn’t always as ethical a Christian as he could have been in his business dealings. Still, he tried. He made a tremendous amount of money, and gave a little bit of it to charity when he thought about it. He lived a good life, although he had the potential to serve God in so many other ways.
When the first brother died, he appeared before Jesus, and Jesus said to him, “Well done, my good and faithful service. I gave you ten talents, and you turned them into 1000 talents. Receive your reward. Here are billion, billion talents.” To the second brother he said, “Well done, my good and faithful service. I gave you ten talents, and you turned them into twenty talents. Receive your reward. Here are billion, billion talents.”
The first brother was shocked at first to see that Jesus had rewarded the second brother the same as him. But after thinking a bit, he turned to Jesus and said, “My Lord, seeing that I served you so much during my life in comparison to my brother, and seeing that we both received the same reward in the end, if I had it all to do over again, I would have done it exactly the same. Thank you.”
I love this story because it really speaks to what I believe is the nature of grace.
It speaks to what God is like, but also to what mature love is like. And it speaks to the heart of our parable. Our parable this morning teaches a really important lesson, which is that no matter when we turn to God, God is always ready to take us in. But like everything Jesus teaches in the parables, there is more than one lesson to learn.
All of us have grown up hearing the parables of Jesus, but most of us don’t really understand the nature of the parables. Why did Jesus teach in parables, and what makes them different from stories? Parables are stories, but they are wisdom stories. Their intent is to teach people how to live more wisely in their lives. Also, parables are always based on everyday observations. When Jesus told his parables, he was telling people things based on what they saw everyday, or at least experienced often in their lives. He used farming, shepherding, weddings, the marketplace, and the Temple as his settings. If he were alive today, he might use the grocery store, the neighborhood, being stuck in traffic, or watching sports as the topics of his parables. Although we are very used to parables, the fact that we are 2000 years, and over 4000 miles separated from the setting for them makes it hard for us to really appreciate the depth of these parables. The fact is that we don’t understand ancient Middle Eastern everyday events, and that gets in the way of our understanding the parables.
This parable is teaching a lot more than meets the eye. At first glance this just seems to be a parable about the nature of getting into heaven. We think that perhaps it’s about making conversion at last minute or last minute confessions so that we can get into heaven. To understand the parable, we have to learn more about it. So to help you, let me give you the background of the parable.
The parable takes place in what was a common daily scene in ancient Middle Eastern towns. The time of year is September. How do we know? We know because the vineyard owner is looking for laborers to bring in the harvest. In ancient Middle Eastern culture, the production of wine was not only big business, but an important part of life. You see, people didn’t drink much water in those days. They drank wine. They would mix wine with water. The alcohol in the wine killed the germs in the water. No one back then considered water to be a healthy drink because it was filthy. It was clean enough to wash clothers or hands, but not to drink. But it was okay once wine was mixed with it. So the wine harvest was crucial not just to wine drinkers, but to everyday living.
There was a rush, though. Once the October rains came mold could form on the grapes and ruin the wine. So the vineyard owner had to hire enough laborers to get it all in. Typically he would go to the marketplace where the poorest of the poor would gather every morning. In many ways, these people were lower than slaves. At least slaves didn’t have to worry about where their next meal was coming from, or about having a roof over their heads. These day laborers had no steady job. They were at the mercy of landowners. Typically they were paid a daily wage that kept them at a basic subsistence level. The failure to be hired for that day could mean the difference between a man’s family eating that day or not.
So the vineyard owner would go to the marketplace and begin choosing workers at about 6 a.m. He would assess their work around 9 a.m., and if they didn’t seem to be working fast enough, he would go back to the marketplace and hire more workers. He would assess again at noon, 3 p.m., and 5 p.m. Each person he would hire would be paid a reduced rate of 4/5ths, 3/5ths, 2/5ths, and 1/5th of a daily wage. That was common business practice. The laborers would stand in the marketplace all day waiting for the vineyard owner to come back and hire them, hoping to make some money.
In our parable, the vineyard owner does everything a normal businessman does, except at the end of the day. He pays those who had worked 12 hours a day’s wage. Then he pays those who had worked 9 hours a day’s wage. He then paid those who had worked for 6 hours a day’s wage. Those who worked for 3 hours he paid a day’s wage, and those who worked one hour he paid a day’s wage. The laborers who worked 12 ours were outraged. This was so unfair! But the vineyard owner, who is now seen as somewhat of a fool—although we know him as a “holy” fool—tells the laborer, “What business of it is of yours if I pay the others a day wage? You got a day’s wage. Be happy with what you have, but also be happy for the others, too, because I was generous and they will eat well tomorrow.”
If it were to take place today, where do you think it would take place? It would probably take place in California, and the laborers would be immigrants, legal or otherwise.
Knowing all this allows the parable to come more alive. While there a many, many lessons we can draw from this parable, let me share three of them with you—three lessons that take us deeper than just lessons about making deathbed confessions.
First, this passage is a warning to Jews about the Gentiles, and to Jesus’ followers about new Christians. To the Jews, he was saying that a time was coming soon when Gentiles would join the Jews as God’s chosen people. The Jews had been God’s chosen for a long time, and they had enjoyed all of God’s benefits in God’s vineyard, God’s kingdom. But God was about to call others whom the Jews saw as unfit, and God was going to invite them into the kingdom. The Jews would complain, but God’s answer would still be, “What are you complaining about? I have given you everything you’ve deserved. I’ve treated you well. What business is it of yours if I also treat the Gentiles well?”
There is also a warning to us. There are many Christians among us who are not all that accepting of newer Christians, or at least not to newer members of our churches. I don’t think this is a problem for members of Calvin Church because we’ve always been good at integrating in members who want to be part of the life of Calvin Church. For instance, we’ve called people to be elders who have been members for 25 years, but also those who have only been members for 2 years. Length of membership and service is not a prerequisite for being a full part of Calvin Presbyterian Church. But for many, there are stepping stones and roadblocks put before people, whether it is glaring at others who might sit in our pews, or expecting newer, younger members to defer to our wishes when it comes to worship and music. I remember once hearing the member of a small church say that a particular person was not really eligible to be an elder in his church because she was still a new member—after fifteen years of being a member! The point is that we are called to celebrate the fact that God cares just as much for those who are new in our midst as about us. The warning is that we need to be just as welcoming.
Second, the parable is about God’s compassion. It tells of God’s love towards all. It doesn’t matter when we turn to God, or even that we completely turn to God. God loves us all equally. God cares for those who have been Christians for a long time, and for those who have only been Christians for a short time. All of us will receive an abundance of God’s grace because that’s the nature of God. God has so much to give, and God is willing to give it all to us. It is important for us to be ready to receive it, though. Just as the laborers had to show up in the marketplace, we need to show up to receive the abundance of grace God has to offer.
The third message is about God’s Economy. We don’t normally think about the idea that God has an economic system, but God does. We think in terms of Capitalism or Communism or socialism, but God has an economic plan that we might call Godism. Basically, it’s a free-market system based on generosity. While Capitalism is based on building profits for our own sake, God’s economy is about using profits for other people’s sake.
Our passage tells us that while God does care about harvesting grapes and producing wine, and about the wealthy vineyard owner, it also says that God cares about the impoverished day laborers. God isn’t just content to say that because they are unskilled and haven’t worked hard enough to better themselves, they deserve what they get. Jesus is saying that God cares deeply about their welfare, enough to be generous with them even when to do so seems to make God seem like a business fool.
God’s economy is one built on generosity. And it’s an economy that we are called to be part of. It means taking seriously the call to give, not just out our abundance, but out of everything we have. We are called to be generous, especially with those who are poor, hungry, homeless, and the like. We are called to hear God’s warning to us to be compassionate, and to live under God’s economy. We are called to give to the church—to be generous in supporting God’s work in the world—because God is generous with us. And we are called to live lives steeped in God’s generosity.
So, as you listen to his parable, what lessons do you hear, and are you willing to apply them to your life.
Amen.
Parable Wisdom: 1. Forgiving as We've Been Forgiven
Matthew 18:23-35
October 17, 2010
For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.
On October 2nd of 2006, something terrible happened. It was a tragedy that rocked much of Central Pennsylvania. At 10:15 a.m., a man named Charles Carl Roberts parked his pick-up at the West Nickel Mines School. This was an Amish School with a teacher and about fifteen children of all ages. Pulling out a gun, he ordered all the children, who had been outside for recess, back into the school. He then ordered a few of them to help him bring stuff into the school, such as rope, boards, nails, and other things. The teacher and some of the children took advantage of this to escape and get help. Responding to their please, the police arrived fifteen minutes later.
What Roberts did was baffling because he was known in the Amish community. He was a truck driver who picked up milk from Amish farms. He was actually somewhat well thought of. But his intentions on this day were truly evil. He had been having dreams of molesting children, and that was his intent on that day. The escape of the children and the arrival of the police at 10:45 a.m. disrupted his plans. At 11:07 a.m. he began shooting the ten children he had placed against the wall. Five died, and five were critically wounded. After shooting them, he turned the gun on himself.
His acts of violence against innocent children shocked not only the Amish community, but much of Central Pennsylvania. People were enraged. How could someone have done this? Why didn’t his family know if his intents beforehand? Why didn’t the police suspect something? People wanted answers. They wanted scapegoats.
There was also something different about this shooting that baffled people. We are used to hearing stories like this, about grieving, angry families wanting answers. But what confused people was how the Amish responded. They never got angry. Instead, they acted with love and forgiveness. Immediately the elders of the Amish community told the others that they were to forgive Roberts, and to act in a forgiving ways toward his family. They said that Roberts’ act not only tore apart Amish families, but also the Roberts family.
Within hours the Amish were visiting Roberts’ wife, children, and parents. One Amish man held Roberts’ father for an hour while he sobbed. They brought dinners over for the Roberts families. They also set up a charitable fund for the family to help them get through the bad economic times that were sure to follow. About 30 of the Amish attended Charles Roberts’ funeral, and Marie Roberts, Roberts’ wife, was one of the few outsiders invited to attend the funeral for their children. Afterwards, Marie Roberts wrote an open letter to them, saying, "Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need. Gifts you've given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you."
Interestingly, the non-Amish community struggled with the forgiving response of the Amish. On television, experts opined that the Amish were engaging in mass denial, repression, or some other psychological defense mechanism. No one could understand how the Amish would be so forgiving. They thought it was unhealthy. Yet when interviewed, the Amish had simple responses, including one quoting our passage for this morning.: “ So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
They said that they were forgiving because they had been forgiven, and because a forgiving God called them to forgive. Their response to the shootings was so baffling that sociologists from local colleges came to Nickel Mines to understand more the Amish response. They wrote about their experiences in a really good book, Amish Grace. It was turned into a movie, although the movie really wasn’t very good, and didn’t reflect that accurately what these three sociologists discovered and wrote about in their book. Simply put, the Amish acted the way Jesus called us to act to all tragedies and traumas, yet people couldn’t understand. They proved that Jesus’ call to forgive could be something practical, yet people still thought they are being overly idealistic, psychologically healthy, or delusional.
Growing up somewhat near the Amish as a child, I know that they have been a misunderstood people. Still, the thing I’ve always admired about the Amish is how deeply they’ve tried to live out the Gospel no matter what. They don’t come up with the kinds of excuses we do for why we can’t follow the Gospel in everyday life. They try their best to find a way. I may not be willing to follow in their footsteps, and I may have a different understanding of the Gospel, but I will always respect their passion and commitment. They are a people who practice radical forgiveness.
I realize that we can look at the Amish and say that they really didn’t forgive because the family of Charles Roberts didn’t do anything wrong. But tell that to the hundreds of people who criticized the Amish for their forgiveness, and who obviously thought that the parents, spouse, and children should pay for Roberts’ sins. The fact is that forgiving is hard no matter who we are, or what the circumstances.
Why is forgiving so hard? It has to do with basic human biology and psychology. Whenever we are hurt badly, whether that means a physical hurt or a psychological, emotional hurt, our brains create a defensive shield to keep us from being hurt like that again. It’s a protective mechanism. We hold grudges because grudges protect us from being hurt again. And this defensive shield can do a lot of things to us. It can make us bitter as we extend our grudge to the world. It can cause us distrust all people who are potential threats. It can also make us hate others and hold onto anger. Basically, this psychological and emotional defense system does everything it can to keep us from forgiving. You see, by not forgiving we protect ourselves. When we forgive, we make ourselves vulnerable.
Unfortunately, there’s a price to pay for not forgiving. As Nelson Mandela said, after spending 24 years in prison, often being treated harshly and tortured, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” God calls us to forgive because God wants us to transcend our biology, our psychology, and our resentment.
Sue Norton understood this. In January of 1990, she received terrible news at her home in Arkansas City, Kansas. Her father and his wife had been murdered in their home. A man named Robert Knighton (B.K.), all for $17.00 and an old truck, killed them in their isolated Oklahoma farmhouse. It was a brutal murder, and one that tore into Sue’s soul.
Sue says she felt "numb". She couldn’t understand why someone would want to hurt people who were old and poor. She sat through B.K.’s trial, filled with conflicted feelings. She had been deeply hurt, but she couldn’t understand the way the people attending the trial were acting. Everyone in the courtroom was consumed with hate. They all expected her to feel the same way. But she couldn’t hate the way they did because she says, "it didn’t feel good."
The last night of the trial she knew there must be another way. She couldn’t eat or sleep that night and prayed to God to help her. When morning came, she sensed God saying, "Sue, you don’t have to hate B.K., you could forgive him".
The next day, while the jury was out for deliberation, Sue got permission to visit B.K. in his holding cell. Sue said afterwards, "I was really frightened. This was my first experience in a jail. B.K. was big and tall, he was shackled and had cold steely eyes." At first B.K. refused to look at Sue. She asked him to turn around and he answered, "Why would any one want to talk to me after what I have done?" Sue replied, "I don’t know what to say to you. But I want you to know that I don’t hate you. My grandmother always taught me not to use the word hate. She taught me that we are here to love one another. If you are guilty, I forgive you.”
B.K. thought she was just playing games. He couldn’t understand how she could forgive him for such a terrible crime. Sue says, "I didn’t think of him as killer, I thought of him as a human being.” Much like the way the people of Central Pennsylvania thought of the Amish after the Nickel Mines shooting, people thought that Sue had lost her mind. Friends would step to the other side of the road to avoid her. But Sue says, "There is no way to heal and get over the trauma without forgiveness. You must forgive and forget and get on with your life. That is what Jesus would do.”
B.K. was executed in 2003, but prior to his execution, Sue often wrote to him and visited occasionally. She felt that B.K. should never leave prison, but she didn’t want him executed. She eventually became friends with B.K. and because of her love and friendship he became a devout Christian. Her forgiveness allowed some good to come out of her father’s death. As she said, "I have been able to witness to many people about Jesus and forgiveness and helped others to heal. I have brought B.K. and many other men on death row to our Lord Jesus Christ. I live in peace with my Lord!" (adapted from “Stories of Real Forgiveness,” found at http://www.catherineblountfdn.org/rsof.htm).
What Sue Norton did was hard, but it was also deeply Christian. I’m not sure we can truly call ourselves Christian if we can’t forgive experiences both big and small. The fact is that forgiving another does not mean forgetting. Instead it means giving a gift to another person despite the fact that she or he doesn’t deserve it. Forgiving is a gift of grace that we give to another person because we’ve been given it ourselves. God’s nature is to give us grace no matter what we’ve done, and so God forgives us no matter how many times we act in selfish, hurtful, or even violent ways. And God doesn’t want us to keep that grace for ourselves. God wants us to share it by being forgiving ourselves. That’s why the central word in “forgive” is give.” No one said that forgiving was easy, but Christ did say it was necessary—necessary to save your soul.
Amen.
What Does It Mean to Be Presbyterian? 4. Sola Scriptura
Mark 10:1-12
October 3, 2010
He left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them.
Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
Do you know what one of the toughest things for me was about going to seminary? It was learning to read the Bible properly. I had read the Bible twice from cover to cover before going to seminary, so I was at least familiar with what was in it. Of course, I did that because I had only rejoined the church eight months earlier after being away from the church for nine years. I felt biblically ignorant, so I read the Bible twice to become more familiar. I didn’t understand most of what I read, but I read it. Still, I was unprepared for what I faced in seminary.
Most pastors experience the same kind of struggles I did when they first go to seminary. Most of us have had head-spinning first years. The reason is that there are ways to read Scripture that really open it up in amazing ways, but it takes a while to learn them.
This way of reading Scripture, called the historical-critical method, involves discovering in Scripture more than just what you see at first on the page. It means reading it in depth. But more on that later. To prepare us for this kind of reading, we seminary students had to take two full years of biblical languages, meaning that we had to take a year of learning to read Greek, and then another year of learning to read Hebrew, which are the original languages of the New and Old Testaments, respectively. Then we had to take courses on the different books of the Bible, to the point at which our heads felt like exploding because of too much information.
So here’s a question for you to ponder. Why do you think it’s so important for seminary students to learn so much Bible? Almost a third of our courses were biblical courses. Why not cut back on the Bible and learn more about things like religious ideas, church administration, leadership, and things like that? Sure, the Bible is important, but shouldn’t we pastors be reading the Bible on our own anyway? Why not use our valuable time learning other things, and then devote ourselves to biblical learning either on our own or later?
The answer lies at the core of Presbyterian beliefs. Why spend so much time on scripture? The answer is because of sola scriptura. Do you know what sola scriptura means? It was one of the prominent protest phrases of the Protestant movement on the 16th century. It means, “by scripture alone.”
The leaders of the Protestant Reformation were absolutely adamant that our faith should be grounded in Scriptural guidance and nothing else. They were protesting a problem that existed in the Roman Catholic Church at the tine, the church of which they had all been raised and become members of. The Catholic Church, for almost 1000 years, had developed beliefs and traditions rooted in thinking that sometimes ran counter to Scripture. The Catholic Church had made papal and church authority equal to Scripture, and it had led to abuses that the Reformers, such as John Calvin and Martin Luther, saw as self-serving and against God.
Let me give you an example. Do you know what the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is? It’s a belief in the Roman Catholic Church that because Jesus was without sin, he could not have been conceived in a fallen and sinful womb. So the church came up with a doctrine that basically said that Mary was conceived without sin, so that she could bear Jesus without sin. This idea reflected the Catholic understanding of sex, which was that it was, by nature, sinful. So they had to come up with a way for Mary to have been conceived as humans normally are, without being subject to the sinfulness of sex. So they created the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, saying that Mary’s conception was free of flaws, mistakes, or sin. The problem is that at worst this is not a biblical idea, or at best it is an idea that stretches the Bible beyond what it actually says. This doctrine goes against Romans 3:23, which says that all people are sinful. Roman Catholics would say that it is biblical because when the angel appears to Mary and tells her that she is “full of grace,” that signifies that she was sinless. That’s a stretch. The Reformers looked at doctrines like this and said that they were human conventions, and that Christians needed to get back to a root in Scripture. Getting back to creating a church more like the original Church was a passion for the Reformers. The legacy for us is that we are called to base our beliefs on scripture alone—sola scriptura.
It’s not enough, though, just to put scripture at the center of our faith and life. There’s something else that the Reformers understood that was key. We not only have to read scripture, but we have to read it in a particular way, and if you don’t read scripture the right way, it can lead you down the wrong road. It can lead to the modern problems we have today when it comes to reading the Bible, which are the twin problems of biblical literalism and biblical anachronism.
Biblical literalism is a problem we all recognize today. It’s the tendency to read Scripture in a very literal way, in a way that treats it as though it was written 2000 years ago, placed in a time capsule, and opened today so that we can read what the ancient Christians wanted for us today. It treats the Bible as though there are no inconsistencies or difficulties in it. Biblical anachronism is the belief by some that nothing in the Bible is relevant to today. Biblical anachronists would simply say that it is an outdated, primitive book that has no bearing on today’s problems, so it should be ignored. Unfortunately, most biblical anachronists don’t know the Bible at all, so their belief is rooted in a basic ignorance of Scripture. The twin problems of literalism and anachronism comes from a deeper problem: the tendency of people to engage in eisogesis rather than exegesis.
I don’t’ mean to overload you with overly technical terms. These two terms are fairly easy to understand. Think “eisogesis” bad, “exegesis” good. What’s the difference. Eisogesis means reading into the Bible what you already believe or want to believe. You treat it as though it was written only to you, and to support what you already believe. Presbyterians stand against eisogesis, and this stand against it is the reason why Presbyterian pastors have to spend three years in seminary, with the equivalent of a full year devoted to studying the Bible, including reading it in its original Greek and Hebrew forms. We are taught to engage in exegesis.
What is exegesis? It is reading the Bible in context in order to understand what it is saying to us today. When you do exegesis, you read the Scripture in context, asking:
• Who’s the author?
• What’s the context?
• Why was it written?
• What was going on at the time?
• How does this relate to other parts of the Bible?
• How do we apply this to our situation today?
We ask deep questions of Scripture. We try to understand everything about why it was written, and what was going on at the time of its writing, so that we can understand its issues. Exegesis teaches us how to avoid misapplying and manipulating Scripture to fit our own preconceived notions. Learning to distinguish between eisogesis and exegesis is the purpose of sending all Presbyterian pastors to seminary.
This is a direct contrast to what you see among many in the nondenominational, evangelical movement. The fact is that many, many evangelical pastors (if not most) are ordained without going to seminary. They are not taught these deeper ways of reading Scripture. Since they are ordained by their own churches, rather than by a denomination with standards, many of these evangelical pastors lack biblical training, or at leat the kind we get. And of the ones who do go to seminary, many go to seminaries where they take one year of basic religious understanding, and another learning marketing, administration, and organizational skills. The result is that many of these church pastors abuse Scripture by reading into it their own agendas.
So far what I’ve talked to you about is fairly technical. Let me show you what I mean, starting with our passage today, which says, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
On the face of this passage it seems fairly clear what Jesus is saying: You can’t get divorced, and if you do so and get married you are committing the sin of adultery. And this would be a good interpretation,… if you are doing eisogesis. If you read it deeper, you’ll find that there’s more there that you need to know to understand the passage. And it all has to do with understanding who, what, where, when. First of all, to understand the passage you have to pay attention to why Jesus says what he does. It says in the beginning of the passage that “Some Pharisees came, and to test him… The key word in this is the word “test.” Jesus knows that he is being tested, and that the question is set up to get him in trouble. If he says it is permissible to divorce, then the orthodox Jews will make trouble against him. If he says it isn’t permissible, then King Herod’s people will hear about it and possibly arrest him. You see, Herod had been divorced several times. Either way, Jesus loses.
At the same time, Jesus’ answer is a rebuke of the Pharisees. He knows that among the Pharisees, divorce is easy for men, hard for women. What do I mean? A Pharisee man could divorce his wife for any reason, including adultery. He could divorce her because he no longer liked her cooking, or she got old, or she scolds him too much, or he doesn’t like her friends. To divorce her, all he had to do was to get a writ of divorce from a rabbi, which was very easy for the right price, and then face the east while reciting three times in her presence, “I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee.” Meanwhile, a woman could only divorce a man if he had committed adultery, which she had to prove through witnesses, or because he was engaged in a corrupt vocation such as pig farming or tanning skins, which would render the husband sinful and untouchable. So, under these conditions what Jesus said might not have been so much a barring of divorce as it was protecting women. You see, a divorced woman, if she was not taken back by her original family, would be plunged into poverty. Often she had no choice but to become a prostitute, a slave, or a beggar. Jesus is both chastising the Pharisees and protecting women.
In addition, marriage had a different foundation then than today. Back then people didn’t marry out of love. They married because of a contractual arrangement. Women were considered property of men. Marriage was a contractual agreement between families as one family gave title of their daughter to another man. These marriages were often arranged years in advance when the man and the woman were both children. Marriage was as much an economic relationship as it was anything else. This is not the case today. We marry out of love. This brings us to a question about this passage. If marriage is based on something different today, and women and men have an equal ability to live dignified lives after a divorce, does the passage still apply in the same way? I don’t know if I know the answer, but what it says is that there is more complexity to Scripture than many people think. Add into this the fact that Jesus tells us to look at the plank in our own eyes, and not the speck in others, and to not judge. How does this impact what we make of this passage?
Let me give you another passage to look at, and see if you reading it more deeply helps gain a better understanding. Look at Deuteronomy 21:18-21, where it says, “If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid.” Would we apply this passage literally today? I’m sure some of you who are parents of teens would love to ☺. But what do we make of it today? We dismiss it because we compare it to Gospel messages of Jesus, which teach us to treat children with care and love, and we recognize that Gospel trumps Deuteronomy. So we ignore this passage today.
Let me show you one more passage, and see if reading it more deeply gives you a different understanding. Look at Genesis 2, where it says, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.”
Seems pretty much what we’ve learned all these years. Adam is created, and we know that later he will be put to sleep, his rib taken out, and Eve will be created. This understanding of the passage leads many Christians to say that women are inferior to men because they came out of men. The problem is that they lack a deeper understanding of the passage. Let me take you in deeper.
First of all, it should not be translated as “the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground…” That’s a poor translation based on hundreds of years of eisogesis. It really should read that Adam was formed from adamah. Adamah is the dirt, and Adam comes from adamah. It would be better translated that the human was formed from the humus, or earth. The name Adam is related to adamah in the same way that human is related to humus. It is Genesis’ way of telling us that human beings are made of the earth. The reason we translate Adam as “man” is that Hebrew, much like French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin, is a gender-specific language in which all nouns are assigned a gender, even if it makes no sense to do so. Adam is a masculine noun, adamah is feminine. If we are going to translate Adam as “man,” then perhaps we should translate adamah as “mother earth,” although that wouldn’t make sense, either. The point is this first creation of God is not a man, but a human being with no gender—or better yet, both genders.
Then God breathes into the human the “breath of life.” That is a mistranslation. It should say that God breathed into the human ruach. Ruach is the Hebrew word, and it means more than just breath. It means “Spirit,” too. The passage is saying that the first human being is created from humus, but then God’s Spirit is breathed into it. It tells us that humans, unlike all other created creatures, has God’s Spirit in them, not just life.
When the whole rib incident happens, it doesn’t say that Adam goes to sleep, has the rib removed, and then Eve is created. Actually, it is that the human being is put to sleep, and two new creations are formed. Once the rib is removed, the being that was Adam becomes Ish, and the woman is named Ishah. Ish is the man, Ishah is the woman. They are connected, but they are different creatures from the original human being, Adam. The reason we call them Adam and Eve is that later, in Chapter 3, the man changes from Ish to Adam, and the woman is given the name Eve. It’s confusing, but it has to do with the fact that the Bible often puts together stories from different traditions, and then never tries to clean it all up. We try to clean it all up, but when we do we can make mistakes. This new understanding of Genesis has a huge impact. For instance, it is part of the foundation that allowed the Prebyterian Church to begin ordaining women as deacons, elders, and pastors. This understanding tells us that women and men are equals because we both come from Adam and from Adamah, and are animated by God’s Spirit. There is no distinction in God’s eyes.
How we read Scripture makes a difference. Do we read it in a deep way, or in a shallow way? I realize that in talking about all this, you may not have the tools that we pastors have been given, but there are tools out there. For one, start by reading the Bible using a study Bible. There are a lot of great study Bibles out there, and they give you this kind of information to help you. Start by reading the gospels first, and then move onto other parts of the Bible. Another thing to do is to use our church library, in our prayer room. It has great resources for you to use.
Remember that we Presbyterians are people of the Bible because we believe in the idea of sola scriptura. If you ground your life and thinking in Scripture, you will find God speaking to your mind, heart, and soul. And it can have an amazingly transforming effect on your life.
Amen.
What Does It Mean to Be Presbyterian? 3. Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda
Romans 12:1-8
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
I want to share with you a story I’ve told before, and I want to share it with you because it has a lot to do with what it means to be Presbyterian, although you may not see the connection right away.
Back in 1845, an expedition led by Sir John Franklin set sail from England with a crew of 138 men. The two ships of the expedition set sail amidst a great celebration because they believed this expedition would ultimately find the mythical Northwest Passage across northern Canada, a passage many believed would allow ships to avoid having to sail around the Cape of Magellan at the tip of South America, or the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, thus cutting thousands of miles off the trip to the Pacific. Whoever found this passage would become the greatest person on earth, and would assure that his country was the most powerful because they would control the lucrative trade with the Orient.
The expedition’s two ships were a marvel. Each ship was a three-masted barque carrying auxiliary steam engines. Each ship contained a 1200 volume library, a hand-organ playing 50 tunes, china place settings for the whole crew, cut glass wine goblets, and ornate silver settings for the officers bearing their initials and family crests. Along with this was a twelve-day coal supply. What the ships didn’t contain were winter clothing, coal reserves for more than twelve days, and other crucial provisions for a passage through the arctic. You see, they expected this to be an easy trip, and so they really didn’t prepare much at all.
The expedition soon passed out of sight. Over the following years, word of the expedition’s fate passed back to England through explorers who had heard from Inuit tribes near the arctic what had become of the expedition. For example, some crewmembers had been seen pushing a wooden boat across the ice. Similar boats were seen at Starvation Cove, along with the remains of 35 men. The remains of thirty bodies were found at Terro Bay. Apparently the Inuit had also seen one of the three-masted barques protruding from the ice at Simpson Strait.
Over the course of the next twenty years search parties recovered skeletons from all over the arctic. Slowly, the story was stitched together. With his ships frozen solid in the ice and unable to move, Franklin died aboard ship. Their supplies exhausted, the remaining officers and men outfitted themselves from the ships’ stores and set out to walk to safety. Eventually, their frozen bodies were found along with their supplies. Often what they took with them was bizarre. For instance, many were found with remains of chocolate, tea, guns, and oddly the place settings of the silver flatware with the officers initials and crests engraved on them. In the end, no members of the expedition survived.
Why do you think Franklin set out for such a cold, cold environment with so many silly things? The answer is simple: he had prepared the way you normally prepare for typical journeys, and he hadn’t realized that this was an atypical journey. The members of the Franklin Expedition died because they set out on a new voyage prepared for the past and not the future. Captain Franklin had a lot of experience sailing normal seas, but had thought very little of the challenges of sailing through a frozen sea. They didn’t bring along enough food, coal, or even winter clothes. He was satisfied that his experiences in the past would be enough for what he faced in the future, and the result of his miscalculation was that he and his crew all died terrible deaths.
You know, one of the main challenges in life is always being prepared for what’s coming rather than for what’s past. You can see this idea reflected in how we live our lives. We spend a tremendous amount of time going to school and college to prepare for the future. In sports we practice and practice to prepare for future games. Unfortunately, as we get older we often become less prepared for what is coming, especially in a religious, spiritual way. For example, how prepared are we ever for dying? How prepared are we for crises where we need God? The church is no different from us as individuals. The church lives in a culture undergoing constant change, but are we prepared for the changes around us, and for meeting them? Are we prepared for the future?
The modern Church is often prepared more for the past than for the future. The answers given by Christianity to the questions of faith so many people have today are often ones that worked in the past, but aren’t adequate for the future. We also struggle with our theologies and ways of worship, because often they reflect a culture that’s past, not one that’s coming.
Why do we have such a hard time adapting to the future. A basic reason is that people often want the Church and their faith to be an anchor for their lives. I’ve heard this often. People say, “I want the Church to be my anchor as I go through difficult times.” Do you know what the problem with being an anchor is? It keeps the ship from sailing. Think about what the purpose of a ship is? It is supposed to sail to new lands. It is supposed to be prepared for that trip. It is supposed to get people from one state of being to another. If a ship is at anchor, it is not really doing what it was created to do. There may be times to be at rest when loading or unloading, but a ship is for sailing. If the church is our anchor, it is leaving us unprepared for the winds of life. Here’s a way of thinking about it. If a hurricane comes, are you safer in your ship at anchor in a harbor, or out at sea? The answer is that you are safer out at sea where you can bob up and down on the waves. If you are at anchor in the harbor, you are in danger of being smashed against rocks, being thrown inland, or, if of being capsized.
John Calvin and the other reformers of the 16th century were very familiar with the problems of wanting church to be an anchor. They surveyed the times and recognized that the Roman Catholic Church was becoming irrelevant for people’s lives. The people of their times were asking new questions of faith, and they were facing new situations with the rise of new forms of government, new technologies, and new ways of living. The Reformers knew that to be a church meant to be a place that struggles to change to adapt to new challenges and situations. That’s why they came up with our phrase for today:
Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda.
Have you ever heard that phrase? It was a popular one in Calvin’s day. It means, “The church reformed, always being reformed.” They used this phrase to remind the church that it had undergone changes in the past, and that it needed to be prepared for changes coming in the future. The idea was that we are a church that has been transformed, and that we always need to be open to being transformed by God. We never stay fixed. We are never an anchor. We are a ship. This does not mean that we make changes for change’s sake. We always hold onto our traditions, but we are willing to upgrade them when times change. Our challenge is always figuring out how to adapt to the future while maintaining ties to the past. This “reformed, always being reformed” was a reponse to the Catholic tradition that had stayed mostly fixed for a thousand years.
You can see how reformata semper reformanda has impacted the Presbyterian Church in its history. For example, back in 1860 the church split over an issue of being reformed. One part of the church wanted to prepare itself for the future, the other part wanted to cling to the past. Do you know what the issue was? Slavery. The northern Presbyterian Church declared it was against God, the southern Presbyterian Church declared it was an institution instituted by God. That split wasn’t healed until reunification in 1983. Back in the 1960s and 70s another split occurred as the church began ordaining women. Again, part of the Church was meeting the challenges of the future, as women in the culture were being more fully included in all areas. That split still hasn’t been healed. Both the Presbyterian Church of America and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church split from us because they were not ready to adapt to a fuller inclusion of women.
This idea of reformata semper reformanda isn’t just for churches. It’s for us as individuals, too. The truth is that the moment our faith becomes fixed is the moment our faith moves off of God. Learning, stretching, and growing is always meant to be part of our faith lives because we are always called to be reformed. Paul teaches us this in our passage for today: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Paul is telling us that if we are content to anchor our lives in the world, to stop growing spiritually, religiously, and theologically, we miss God. God moves on without us. The challenge is to keep moving with God. It’s as though God is constantly beckoning us to grow and move with God, but we have to choose to follow. We have to be prepared to sail to the new ways God is leading us to be, both as individuals and as a church.
A great way of understanding this comes when you watch the short film, “Day and Night,” a Pixar film shown before Toy Story 3. I showed it when I originally preached this sermon, and I would suggest you find a way to watch it. But let me try to describe it (almost impossible).
It starts with a figure sleeping who wakes up. The surrounding landscape is all black, but within him you can see a bright morning landscape. And as he walks, the landscape changes. He breathes in the air, and as he does you see trees within him blowing in the wind. He takes a morning stroll, and walkers walk through a field appearing within him. He is Day. Suddenly, he comes across a dark figure sleeping on the ground, and within him you see a nighttime field with sheep jumping over a fence, signifying that he is asleep, counting sheep. This is Night. Day pokes Night, and the sheep scatter. He wakes up Night, and the two struggle to understand each other. Soon they are in conflict, fighting with each other. Their rigidity about their each being the only valid person has gotten in their way. As they fight, the scenes within them change, demonstrating their moods. Night is filled with cawing crows, Day is filled with angry bees. You can see the two of them above in the picture:
Then something changes. Day steps away from Night, and within his body you see a woman sunbathing. Night, interested in the woman, pushes Day out of the way and steps into the same area, but you only see the same beach at night, with no one there except an empty cup. Day then steps away and shows him a bunch of women sitting, sunbathing around a pool. Night again pushes him out of the way and sees the same pool at night, crickets chirping in the background. Day realizes that there is something of value in himself to Night, so he shows Night all that he can reveal, showing him jets flying in formation, among other things. Night then shows him all he can do, showing Day nighttime fireworks. The two of them begin to develop an appreciation for each other.
As they grow in appreciation, they dance, they celebrate, and then both begin to change. Day starts to turn into Night, and Night turns into Day. They hug as the rising and setting suns within each on of them synchronizes. And they have joy.
This is what it means to be ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda. It means to be people who grapple with changes that we don’t understand, and learn to embrace them as we change for God’s sake.
Amen.
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