The Online Windows at Los Altos UCC

The Baffled King Composing “Hallelujah” based on II Samuel 11:26-12:13 (quoting song lyrics from “Hallelujah” – words & music by Leonard Cohen, 1995, with additional verses by Rufus Wainwright)

2011-07-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton, Long Beach, California 90815

July 24, 2011

Last Sunday, we talked about King David seducing Bathsheba.
Clearly that occasion was in Rufus Wainright’s mind when he wrote the 4th verse of the song “Hallelujah” (which our choir sang this morning): “Your faith was strong, but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof. Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you.”

Who else could he possibly mean but King David spying on Bath-sheba? I think that Wainwright was right to focus on that one really bad decision on David’s part as the moment that “broke” David’s throne.

(As an aside) Wainright mixed in a little of Samson & Delilah’s story in that verse about tying him to her kitchen chair (which Delilah did twice to Samson: once with fresh bowstrings and another time with new-ropes), but her strong-man lover broke them like threads. Samson only came under her power when Delilah cut off his hair. (You can read all about it in the Book of Judges, chapter 16:4-21). But that was the stormy relationship between Samson & Delilah, not the affair between David & Bathsheba.

Last week, we followed David’s efforts to cover up the pregnancy by returning Uriah from the battlefield to his wife’s bed, but Uriah would not cooperate. Even when (on the second day) David got the soldier drunk, Uriah still slept with the guards, not down in his own house… not enjoying his wife’s company!

So David decided that Uriah had to die, otherwise he would soon discover his wife’s pregnancy and expose King David’s adultery. Under the cover of a battle, David ordered Joab, the general, to pull back the troops and leave Uriah at the front, exposed to the enemy arrows. He did, and the soldier died. David publicly comforted Bathsheba, now widowed and pregnant. Then David married her. And that’s where today’s Scripture reading began.

So… is this story a hero’s epic, with David doing right to rescue the poor woman & her unborn child from the fate of widow- & orphan-hood?

To the public eye, King David was Uriah’s friend -- hosting Uriah to a banquet in the palace shortly before his tragic death, leading the public mourning for the soldier’s gallant sacrifice in battle, and generously saving the man’s widow from poverty by marrying her.

Seen that way, David’s marriage to Bathsheba is somewhat like (in the Christmas story) Daddy Joseph marrying the pregnant Virgin Mary -- and thereby giving to her his own status as being from the “line of David” -- so that Mary’s baby Jesus would have a proper lineage. In this way, too, David rescued Bathsheba’s baby from obscurity. I mean: who would ever have heard of the son of a Hittite soldier? Especially after Uriah was dead! But.. to be the son of King David, now that’s something!

So… is David doing a generous thing by marrying Bathsheba -- an act of charity and kindness, maybe even love? Or is this story really all about hypocrisy and evil in high places, with the king “doing as he pleased” in private, hoping no one would ever be the wiser?

To Nathan the prophet -- which is to say “to God’s all-seeing eye” -- these things that were done by David in secret are about to be announced from the rooftops! David thought that he had gotten away with it until the prophet Nathan confronted him. Citing a case of blatant injustice (the story of the poor man’s beloved ewe-lamb, which was taken and eaten by the rich man!), Nathan asked the King for a verdict. In judging the man in the story “guilty” and deserving of “death”, David actually condemned himself. You see, because he had (first) taken Bathsheba from Uriah, and because (2nd) he had killed her beloved husband, as easy as sending a sheep to slaughter!
The public image of King David as the Lord’s “Anointed” -- a man after God’s own heart, who does everything well just as God would do -- is about to come crashing down! He’s shown to be a man with the same lusts & ego, anger & arrogance, as every other king in history!

In the song “Hallelujah”, Rufus Wainwright points to this reversal of King David’s fortune -- from the golden-fair-haired boy who could do no wrong, to the scoundrel that he had become -- with the following words: “I’ve seen your flag on the Marble Arch. Love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”

After catching David by surprise with the parable of the poor man’s ewe-lamb, Nathan explains that it is really all about exposing David to David! Nathan begins by recapping all the good that God has done to establish David on the throne of Israel: “I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house and his wives into your bosom. I gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more...Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in God’s sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife!... Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me... Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house. I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor... For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun [that is “in the light of day!”].” (II Sam. 12:7-12)

David has carefully tried to cover up his evil, but here comes a man who knows all about it! Nathan says he knows about the affair because the Lord God Yahweh has revealed it, but I would suspect that he has been talking to… Bathsheba! Nathan, after all, is the only one who stays loyal to Bathsheba (and her son Solomon) when David is old and his other sons rebel against him. (see: I Kings 1:11) Nathan is a “prophet”, which means he is one who speaks on God’s authority, but he speaks also on behalf of the widow, Bathsheba.
    What does Nathan say God has already done?

(1) God has Messiah’d David (anointed him). (2) God has rescued him from Saul, (3) gave him a house/lineage, and (4) gave him the wives of Saul ... (I think that last one deserves comment.)

It goes without saying that “marriages” are not always for romantic interest. David’s first wife Michal was a daughter of King Saul. Michal loved David and King Saul promised that she and David could marry under one condition: David had to bring to him 100 “foreskins” of the Philistines. (I Sam. 18:20-29) We are told that, because Saul was both jealous of and afraid of David, he invented the task in the hopes that David would be killed in battle before he could collect all the… (shall    we say?)… “scalps.”

However, David succeeded in the task, and Saul had to keep his word. David married Michal. But we are told: “Saul was David’s enemy from that time forward.” (I Sam. 18:29)

I hope you recall my sermon from two weeks ago, when we told of young David playing his harp and singing for King Saul whenever he was in a “fit” or “twit” or otherwise in a “bad mood.” And while it’s true that “music soothes a savage beast” it’s also true that you’re at risk when you are around a savage beast to begin with! And so, David learned to duck & dodge since King Saul twice tried to skewer David with his spear!

Maybe that was on Leonard Cohen’s mind when he wrote the original verse: “I’ve heard there was a secret chord that David played, and it pleased the Lord. But you don’t really care for music, do you?”

Imagine having a megalomaniac, jealous, angry, frightened father-in-law like King Saul was to David! After Saul banished David from the palace, he gave Michal to be the wife of Palti (or Palti-el), son of Laish.   (I Sam. 25:44) As a fugitive, David had no way to keep or to care for a wife… even if they had been in love.

However, once Saul was dead and David began to rule in Judah, he took Michal away from her new husband Paltiel (2 Sam. 3:16) because, as a daughter of King Saul, she served as proof of David’s right to rule the house of Israel. Having married the king’s daughter, David became a contender for the throne. And when Ishbaal, Saul’s son, was assassinated and David became the King of all Israel, he got Saul’s harem in the bargain, because wives & concubines belonged to the crown. They were royal “property!”

That’s what Nathan was talking about when he said:
“I gave you your masters house and his wives into your bosom.”

For the record: David had eight wives: Michal, his first wife, King Saul’s daughter (I Sam. 18:27) had no children by David. Their relationship was stormy! On one occasion, she publicly scolded David when he danced in the street -- when the Ark of the Covenant was carried into Jerusalem for the first time (II Samuel 6:5-23) -- he danced wearing nothing but a loincloth! Michal wanted David to be more proper! She complained that he was “… uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ maids, as any vulgar fellow might shamelessly uncover himself!” (II Sam. 6:20) Remember what I said last Sunday about one’s attitude toward the naked human body (either our appreciating it for its beauty, or our avoiding it lest we be tempted to lust)… are attitudes formed by one’s up-bringing in one’s family of origin, in addition to the “community standards” of what is appropriate. In other words, our traditional moiré’s.

On that occasion, which was intended to be an opportunity for David to “bless his household” (II Sam. 6:20), turned instead into something mean! David’s reply to his wife was testy and unkind: “It was before the Lord [that I was dancing half-naked]. The Lord who chose ME in place of your father (& all his household), to appoint ME as prince over Israel (the people of the Lord) that I hace danced before the Lord!” (II Samuel 6:21)

At one time, Michal loved David… then she lost him, then she was brought back to him by force, and now (as his wife) she has to share him with other people… with other women!
I can imagine how “conflicted” their relationship is. Remember, Michal had grown up as the daughter of a king, at home with royalty, living in a palace; and she had known little David like a brother when Jonathan was still alive. Now she’s married to him, and he’s a king…

To use Rufus Wainwright’s words: “Maybe I’ve been here before? I know the room, I’ve walked the floor. I used to live alone before I knew you. … And remember when I moved in you, the holy dark was moving too? Then every breath we drew was Hallelujah!”

I can almost hear Michal & David, as a married couple, wondering (as the years have gone by): “What’s changed? Where’s the magic we once had? Remember when every breath we drew was ‘Hallelujah!’?”

Wife #2 was Abagail, the widow of Nabal (I Sam. 25:39)… a woman who had first met David as he was preparing to attack her household and kill them all! David was going to kill them because of an insulting response that her husband Nabal had made to a request from David’s servants, saying: “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse?”

This story makes me thank that Lust was not David’s only sin! He obviously had anger-management issues, too! However, his anger against Nabal was turned into love for Nabal’s wife Abagail when she came out to meet him… and she gave David a gift of 200 loaves of bread, two full goatskins of wine, five already butchered sheep; five bushels of grain, 100 clusters of raisins, & 200 cakes of figs. (I Sam. 25:18) As I read the list of provisions, I wonder: is there a hint of gluttony?

So David has Michal, Saul’s daughter (wife # 1), who bore no children; and Abagail (wife #2) who gave David his second son: Chileab. That’s the second son. The parentage of David’s first-born son, Amnon -- the Crown-Prince, the heir to the throne -- is quite revealing!

Remember, when David ascended to the throne, he inherited Saul’s harem. Michal’s mother, Ahinoam was among them. So… King Saul’s former wife, the mother of Michal, became David’s third wife!
(I Sam.14:50 and I Sam. 25:43)   It was Ahinoam who birthed Amnon, David’s first-born son. So, technically, Crown Prince Amnon was Queen Michal’s half-brother, as well as her royal son. That’s because her own mother is also David’s wife!

It sounds a bit like what goes on in the hills of Tennesee, where (to quote the old Dorothy Shay song): “Your Pa is your Uncle Fud. Well, that makes my sister my cousin, too. Darned if we know who is who.”   With in-laws (and incest!) like that, is it any wonder that the prophet Nathan says that David’s family would be a household in turmoil?

Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me... Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house.    (II Sam. 12:10-11)

And then there was wife #4: Maacah, a Lebanese princess, who was the wife who birthed Absalom (David’s third son, and apparently his favorite) and this wife also birthed Absolom’s sister Tamar. Unfortunately, Crown Prince Amnon fell hopelessly in love with his beautiful half-sister after Tamar went through puberty & he just couldn’t help himself! Amnon burned with desire for her and so… he raped her! (II Samuel 13:1-20)

It makes me: wonder how much of David’s sexual immorality had rubbed off on his eldest son?

It is at crisis moments like these -- when life no longer proceeds at its normal pace, but changes in some way -- that we feel what Leonard Cohen calls: “the 4th, the 5th, the minor fall, the major lift.” A true “Hallelujah” will include them all! “There’s a blaze of light in every word. It doesn’t matter what you’ve heard: the Holy, or the broken… ‘Hallelujah!’”

David as an older man (with family problems & heavy responsi-bilities) is no longer who he was as an inspired youth. The shepherd boy David, who wrote the “23rd Psalm” (as a hopeful, faithful, young idealist!) now composes Psalms of Lament. David has learned to sing the “blues.”

In Psalms such as “Psalm 51” (which we used as our call to worship) -- which is said to have been composed after Nathan revealed to David the reality of his sin in his actions toward Bathsheba & Uriah -- we hear a more mature David say:

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.” (verse 1)
“…I have done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.” (verse 4)
“You desire truth in the inward being; therefore, teach me wisdom in my secret heart.” (verse 6)
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and restore a right spirit within me.” (verse 10)   “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.” (verse 15)

There we have it, even in the depths of David’s contrition, the word “Hallelujah!” “My mouth will declare your praise!” Even in the depths of guilt and shame, of ill-will and bad mistakes, David says: “Praise God.” “Hallelujah!” This is a richer, sadder, wiser, & more mature praise. And I believe, God received it with joy, because it really meant something!

Leonard Cohen put it like this: “And even though it all went wrong… I’ll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but “Hallelujah!”

We notice the darker tones of a more mature “Hallelujah” – as David (and all of us) recognize the need to “praise God” in everything that life throws at us -- everyday and in everyway -- even in the hard times… perhaps especially in the hard times!

The point I want to make is that the person who composed the first “Hallelujah” (David), and who literally filled the biblical Book of Psalms with that refrain (“Praise the Lord!”) under every imaginable circumstance, became more and more “baffled” as his life spun out of control.
Things that had once given him pleasure were now the source of heart-ache. Even the fact that David was now king was no protection from sin & sadness, as Amnon’s rape of Tamar showed.

How does one sing a “Hallelujah” – how does one “Praise God” – when bad things like that are happening? How do you praise God when you feel helpless, hap-less, & hopeless?

I get from David’s story the recognition that our own personal experience of “Hallelujah” (the praising of God) (including that “Hallelujah” that is drawn from our lips during the intimacy of love) isn’t always up-beat and cheery. A true “Hallelujah” will often develop shadows in its former sunshine as it matures; minor chords will be found among the majors; wider harmonies and more complicated rhythms will come into the mix.

And once our “Hallelujah” goes there… there’s no going back! Simple “praise choruses” will feel a bit too light… too trite.

Rufus Wainwright captured David’s fall from grace with these words:   “There was a time when you let me know what’s real and going on below; but now you never show it to me, do you?”

David realized that he had failed to keep faith with The Ways of God-Yahweh. He had begun to act like any other old Philistine chief or Canaanite tyrant! The gradual loss of guidance from God is the consequence of disrespecting God.

As I look at the overall 40-year span of David’s monarchy -- especially as we contrast it with his younger years as a singer & shepherd, as the boy who killed the giant Goliath -- I think I know what Rufus Wainwright was getting at when he wrote: “Maybe there’s a God above… but all I every learned from love was how to shoot at someone who out-drew you. It’s not a cry you can hear at night. It’s not somebody who’s seen the light. It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”
We’ve just spent twenty-minutes with the baffled King composing “Hallelujah.” Despite all the scurrilous, scandalous, and self-serving experiences that David went through as he tried to walk with God through it all with “praise” on his lips, I’m grateful that David pulled no punches. David put his whole life and thought, his emotions and his angers, his temptations and his resolutions, into his Psalms.

David’s formerly youthful and enthusiastic “Hallelujah” has matured through decades of life experiences. But he has kept on praising God through it all!

Changes in life may baffle us; unexpected twists & turns confuse us. But don’t let them stop you from singing “Hallelujah!” Through it all, keep on singing: “Hallelujah! Praise God!” Amen.

"Stuff I Learned As A Kid" (but didn't appreciate until now) based loosely on Proverbs 4:1-7

2011-07-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

June 19, 2011 (Father’s Day)

    My 40th High School reunion is coming up, and the planning team has asked each of us to write down some words of wisdom -- something that life has taught us -- that we would never dreamed of saying 40 years ago.

    My contribution was simply this: "Life is like a teeter-totter. For it to work, we have to take turns being up
and down. Things change. Get used to it."

    Since then, other little flippant remarks (of somewhat similar child-like insight) have crossed my mind. I offer them here -- mostly without comment -- aware that they may one day become illustrations (or even the core idea) in future sermons.

    As a long-remembered poster from my childhood put it: "All the flowers of all our tomorrows are in the seeds of today." You who are parents never know what kinds of seeds your words and behavior are sowing in your impressionable young’uns. On this Father’s Day, I thought a few random observations about growing-up may serve better than a complicated Bible sermon.

    Like this, for instance: If you want to know something really well, you have to touch it, smell it, see if you can pick it up, and look at it upside down. New perspectives give insight.

    As children, may of us were primary “tactile” – that is, we would reach out and touch things that interested us. In a store, or at someone else’s house than your own, or in a museum, such reaching and touching could bring a quick reprimand from Mom or Dad: “Keep you hands to yourself!” or “Don’t touch what doesn’t belong to you.”

    Similarly, perhaps especially for boys: sometimes you have to take things apart to see how they work, but then you run the risk that they might not ever work again when you do. (!) I guess what that taught me is that there's always risk, as well as joy, in learning new things. You can’t always go back, if it’s broken, and “make everything alright again.” Life doesn’t always allow for a “do over.” So, we’ve got to learn how to handle “regret” and not let it weigh us down. If we allow our regrets (memories of our mistakes & failings) accumulate without relief, life can become unbearable.

    As I said a moment ago: new perspectives give insight. I’ve found it very positive to look at situations from someone else’s vantage point; to put yourself in their shoes. However, seeing something from “all sides” isn't easy. Back in High School, I was on the debate team. Success in school "debates" required our team knowing all the possible arguments and evidence to the contrary of our position, and then to formulate a response. To see things from other positions and perspectives than your own helps forge a path for compromise or, better, reconciliation.

    As a kid, I was forever reminded to "look both ways" before crossing the street. That principle serves me on the highway of ideas, too.

    Another area of life that seems to have changes since I was young is how fast time flies! I remember as a child thinking that sometimes "tomorrow" takes a really long time to come. When my Dad was on the road as a bank examiner, he’d be gone from Monday through Friday. Weekends seemed to be a lifetime apart.

    Or another example of slow-moving time: on Christmas Eve, when we kids couldn’t sleep, we’d huddle in each others beds talking about what would be there in the morning. Every passing minute seemed to take an hour! And, didn’t we all (as kids) say: “Are we there yet?” And when Mom would say: “In a minute,” you knew it would always take longer than that!

    The passing of time filled up the whole day, when I was younger. Ten minutes seemed too short if it was "recess," but it was an awfully long time if it's "a time out." Now that I’m pushing 60, however, hours -- days, years! -- seems to race by without leaving hardly a trace… not leaving even very many new memories in its passing.

    For example, I can’t believe that it’s already been 16 months that I’ve been the Pastor of Los Altos U.C.C.! That’s nearly a year and-a-half! We’ve been through two Easters, two Pentecosts & Stewardship campaigns, together. I’ve preached 64 sermons, led 125 Bible studies… And yet there are some ways in which it feels like we’re just still getting acquainted… like I’m “the new kid on the block.” People are still trying to “get used to” the way I do things, or how I say things. Apparently, personal relationships, unlike a transplanted tree, take a long time to take root… an even longer time to grow in trust and develop intimacy. Time flies, friends, so let’s make the most of it.

    So, what’s that so far: (1) Things change, get used to it.
(2) If you really want to get to know something, touch it, taste it, turn it over, look at it from all sides… because new perspectives give insight. And (3) time flies, make the most of it.

    At camp, we used to sing Harry Chapin’s classic song: Cat’s in the Cradle. You may recall the refrain: “The cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon, the little boy blue, and the man in the moon. When you coming home, Dad? I don’t know when. But we’ll get to get together then, son. I know we’ll have a good time then.” In the early verses, the boy wants his dad to play catch with him, ride a bike with him, spend time doing things together Dad & son. But his Dad was always too busy -- on the go, on the road, making money, making a name for himself and making a life for his family. By the final verse, the tables are turning:
“My son came home just the other day, so much like a man I just had to say: Come on, son, let’s sit for a while. “Sorry, Dad,” he said with a smile. “I’ve got things to do, and people to see. Can I borrow the car key? Can I have it, please?” And as he turned away, you know I could see: He’s grown up just like me. Oh, my boy is just like me.”
“And the cat’s in the cradle, and the silver spoon, the little boy blue, and the man in the moon. When you coming home, Son? I don’t know when. But we’ll get to get together then, Dad. I know we’ll have a good time then.”   Time flies. Make the most of it.

    Thinking of recess, I remember that if you’re the one who brings the ball, you sometimes get to pick the teams. And hitting the kid who has the ball might get you the ball, but it won't get you anyone to throw it to. On the other hand, if you toss a ball to a kid, they will probably toss it right back to you. Seems more fun to do it that way... Sharing with others, including them in your game, makes for firm friendships. Ever after 40 years!

    A fourth lesson I learned as a child was to be honest. Even in the little things -- especially in the little things! -- because that’s where your foundation of integrity (or lack of it) is based.

    As a child, I used to think I could fool my mother into thinking I had washed my hands just by wetting the soap and messing up the towel. It never worked. Maybe she saw the dirt on the outside edge of my hand, where I forgot to look. Maybe she really did have “eyes in the back of her head,” like she said.

    Since then I have begun to realize there are no "degrees of honesty" -- there is only "the truth" or "not the truth." It may be as little a thing as saying that you brushed your teeth when you didn't, or asking someone to "say you're not at home" when you really just don't want to talk to the person on the phone. When it comes to integrity, I like to remember: it only takes a little hole to empty a big bucket.

    "Honesty" does not come automatically; it is learned behavior. And while "the truth" -- that is, the "reality", the actual events -- are clear-cut, black & white, factual (either it happened or it didn’t), the meaning & importance we give to that particular event is always shadowed by our own peculiar shades of grey.

    So, my fourth life lesson is this: "Honesty is the best policy," but it is not always easy. To be honest (forth-right, precisely true) is a decision -- an act of will! -- not only to face the truth, but "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (so, help me, God!)." In some situations, truth-telling seems harsh; it may not be kind; to tell someone the honest truth is often a hard decision to make! But I suspect that's also why honesty, even in little things, is able to build character on a solid foundation of personal integrity.

   At one point (back in the early 1960’s), when my father’s Construction Company was over $100,000 in debt -- owing his workers and the building supply vendors for work that had been done, but for which the contracted client (the motel owners and their investors) simply delayed paying upon completion. The bank said that my Dad could declare bankruptcy, close his Construction Company, and thereby eliminate those past debts… but my father said no.

    “I gave them my word that they’d be paid,” he said. “It’s my good name that’s at risk. They will get their money, every penny, even if I have to hold down three jobs.” As a family, we down-sized our home, moved to a new town where my Dad worked as a Vice-President of a Savings and Loan, and he gradually paid off those debts over the next decade. Having moved away, and gone beyond what any statute of limitations could have required, my Dad continued to make payments to his former employees and vendors until it was all paid off in full.

    So what have we covered thus far? (1) Things change, so get used to it.    (2) New perspectives give insight; look at things from all sides, if possible. (3) Time flies, so we should make the most of it. And (4) honesty is the best policy.

    Going back to those childhood days, I loved summer vacation, even though three months away from the classroom meant not remembering all that much when we started up again in the fall. I wish I had a job that had three months off every year! But the school year did teach me a few things beyond the curricula and the studies.

    The first thing I learned in school was that recess is the best part. And it's more fun to play than to watch. "Follow the Leader" is a lot more fun when you're the leader. On the playground, it seems you're either chasing, or being chased. And I think it’s okay to make up the rules as you go along, so long as the others agree to the new rules. Play fair, or don’t play. It doesn't count that your swing is going highest if you're getting pushed and the others aren’t!

    And... you need to know just when to jump off. As a kid, I had plenty of “goose-eggs” on my forehead (and “shiners” on my eye), for miscalculating where a swing was headed! And it may be that crying gets you more attention, but not more friends. “Whiners” have to play alone. And, whatever you do, my last bit of advice learned on the playground is: don’t tease a big kid!

    A lot is made nowadays about the clothing choices our kids make. Girls want their belly-buttons and bra-straps to show; boys droop their drawers so low that the slogan on their Boxers can be read across the room. Abercrombie & Fitch have sexualized pre-teens, and some sneakers are so popular and expensive that kids resort to stealing them! Kids won’t be “caught dead” in home-made clothes, and without the right signature brand, they’d just as soon not wear anything.

    I came of age before all that; and I wore my older brother’s clothes all the way through High School, getting them the year after he outgrew them. “Hand me downs” we called them. At Christmas, our grandparents gave us new underwear and socks   (I suppose it was because my Grandpa worked at JC Penney), so those items and my shoes were bought just for me. Frankly, I didn’t care, because clothes were not the measure of the person in those “olden days.”

    However, I do remember having certain preferences about clothes as a kid. Maybe some of these things will ring true to you, too: Wearing big clothes makes you feel smaller. Pants with pockets are better than ones that don’t have pockets.

    As a rule of thumb: don't wear it if it itches. If you're going to lose a sock, you might as well lose both. On the other hand, there is no good reason why clothes have to match. Old shoes are more comfortable than new ones.

    And, why is it that nobody notices when your zipper is up, but everyone notices when it's down!

    And why is it you always spill your juice when you're wearing your best clothes? For that matter, tell me: why do they even make white pants for kids? Because one of the bigger lessons in life is that “if you stay clean, you'll never have fun.” Kids aren't supposed to have clean fingernails!

    Well, by now, you can tell that I don’t have children of my own, or I wouldn’t wax so eloquent about letting them get dirty!

    But every one of us has BEEN a child at some earlier stage of our lives. We’ve been through it ourselves long before we accept the challenge, and the blessing, of being a Dad or a Mom to someone else.

    I applaud those of you who have set firm limits and been fine role models to the young people that grace our church, and in whose hands the future will one day rest. May you feel good about who you have been to them on this Father’s Day, and may they grow up to be all that you wish them to be.
                                Amen.

"LUST: Making Love, Breaking Love" based on II Samuel 11:1-18 & 26-27

2011-07-17T10:11:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

July 17, 2011

    This morning I am going to be talking about the sin of “lust.”
The dictionary defines “lust” as a personal inclination toward pleasure or delight, an intense longing or craving, usually an intense sexual desire or urge. Its Latin root is “lascivus” – lasciviousness – “wanton” or “lewd.” However, our English word “lust” is also related to the Old High German word “Lust” meaning “pleasure” or “desire” or “enthusiastic.”

    I wish we could focus on the more positive “lusty” pleasures that the German word connotes, rather than the craving for sexual desire that we mean by the word in English. But that wouldn’t be true to today’s Scripture reading, in which King David gives in to his lust for Bathsheba.

    The Church includes the sin of lust in its list of Seven Deadlies. So, before we get into the specifics of “lust”, we might want to be clear about what the Bible calls “sin.” The most general definition of sin is “anything that misses the mark of God’s aim for life” -- anything that takes us “off the track” of God’s Will (which is God’s love and desire for the good of all). Every occasion of sin breaks God’s heart!

    A more practical definition would be that sin “tears down” rather than builds up; it hurts and harms instead of helps. Sin breaks hearts and breaks up homes; sin harms relationships and hurts people. And yet… we keep on doing it!

    There is a peculiar “twist” in human nature -- a “bent” toward violence (so long as we think we can get away with it); a lust for power over others; a general impatience with others; a self-serving desire to claim good for ourselves & blame evil on others...     We are inclined to overlook our own obvious short-comings and to scapegoat others. We tend to spend a lot of time and energy trying to “fix the blame” for what’s gone wrong, rather than trying to “fix the problem.” Such traits are so common, we assume they’re universal.

    On an individual (or personal) level, all of us wrestle from time to time with inclinations & temptations toward sin. But also on a social level, there are conditions that orient us toward sin.

    Foremost among them (I suspect) is the deference of privilege that is shown toward some in society, while looking down on others. That is, some folks are considered “worthy” people; while others are not! To divide the world into “Us” and “Them” is often the first step toward committing social sin. Once you decide “they” are not like you, all manner of evil can be laid on them; or they can be dismissed, ignored.

    It is customary in Church settings to list “Pride” as the first of the “seven deadly sins” and the source of the other six sins. And there is no question that we see “pride” in today’s text, when King David presumes the right to behave toward his neighbor Bathsheba (and subsequently toward her husband, Uriah the Hittite) in very disrespectful ways!

    But… he’s the king! And by this time, David’s been king of Israel and Judah for close to 30 years! Who’s going to stand up against the King!? By definition, to be king is to be “royal” -- to be “sovereign” -- a cut above all other mortals. And David (in particular) knows that he has been chosen -- anointed -- by God to rule over the people. The whole institution of monarchy has “set David up” for the sin of pride.

    “Sin” always involves (1) a personal decision with (2) subsequent moral consequences. In other words: we can choose to act for “the good” of others, or we can act against their good. The former is moral virtue; the latter is what we call “sin” – moral failure.

    A few years ago, when I mentioned that I would be taking seven Sundays to discuss the “seven deadly sins” (one a week), someone said: “Be sure to tell us which week you’ll talk about lust, so I can be there!”   Someone else asked in passing: “What are the other six sins, anyway?     I mean, we all know about immorality, but what are the other sins?”

    Peculiar, isn’t it, that in our society, “sin” has come to mean “sexual immorality” above all else?! Pride, greed, gluttony, sloth, envy, & anger... all that we can accept. But mention “lust” and it makes us squirm. I probably should have posted a warning in last Sunday’s bulletin that today’s sermon would be rated “R” – or maybe “MA” for Mature Audiences only.

    So, the first thing I want to say about “lust” -- or “luxuria” (which is lust’s name in Greek) -- is that it is not the first (nor the worst) form of “immorality.”   It’s just gotten that reputation here in America, where the so-called “Moral” Majority, & the “Christian” Coalition, our Puritan ancestors & some TV preachers (among others) -- who willingly wink at greed, who play upon people’s anger, and who flirt with pride -- point only to sex and sexuality as a measure of America’s “immorality”!

    Just look at what “wedge issues” are splitting some Christian churches: gay & lesbian concerns, the battle over abortion, redefining marriage (to include all committed couples), and the role of women. As a society, we seem to fixate on matters of sex and gender! But in all those examples, the real issue is power (matters of justice), not sex. These divisive issues become perverted when we think that it’s about sexual intercourse.

    Now, don’t get me wrong, there is an element of “lust” in this story of David and Bathsheba that needs to be addressed. And David is the guilty party!

    First, David is guilty when he lusts “in his heart” as he watched Bathsheba taking a bath. His desire for her was kindled… his intense longing, craving, sexual urge. That’s the dictionary definition…and David has it!

    And, frankly, that’s quite natural... As a man, I can imagine he caught his breath when he saw her, and stopped walking... Maybe he even thanked God that he, by chance, had been walking past his window just as this woman stood up from her bath on a near-by rooftop. (“Thank you, God, for this beautiful creature! What a joy to see her splendid form in the moonlight! Thank you, God!”)

    Depending upon our attitudes about nudity -- much of which is formed in the social norms of the family we grew up in, and in the expectations of the people in the community around us -- one might say the naked body is a gift from God to be appreciated and to be enjoyed, or it is something to keep hidden, lest it incite a neighbor to lust.

    Here in sun-drenched Southern California, where girls wear short-shorts on the streets and bikini’s on the beach, I think we must like to see exposed flesh as a thing of beauty.
In sun-drenched Musilm nations, on the other hand, where women are sequestered at home -- or clad beneath burka veils in public -- female flesh must be other-wise thought of.

    Ask yourself: is the naked body a gift from God to be appreciated and to be enjoyed, or is nude flesh something to keep hidden, lest it incite lust in a neighbor? In today’s story, Bathsheba’s innocence and beauty becomes an object for King David’s lust. (That is the sad reality for many men.)

    One could say that this Bible story is probably one of the world’s earliest “porno-graphic” texts -- (porne: being the Greek word for “a harlot” and graphein: meaning “to write”), except that Bathsheba is not a harlot! She is not a sexual object to be used by men.

    Bathsheba is a woman, a wife, who is purifying herself at home with the necessary mikvah/bath following her monthly period. Any telling of this story that turns Bathsheba into a harlot – portraying her as a willing accomplice in “seducing” the King -- is not true to the biblical text. (This happens, for example, in the 1985 movie “King David” starring Richard Gere. Bathsheba lusts after the King; she seduces him.)

    Make no mistake about it: in the Bible story, it is David’s imagin-ation that turns this beautiful woman (and the innocence of her “nudity”) into an object of his lust. The sin is in David, not in her. It’s not Bathsheba’s “fault” that she is bathing; nor her fault that she is beautiful. It is David, in his lusty imagination as he watches her, who initiates the sin, and -- as King -- has the power to summons her to his bedchamber!

    David was lusting in his heart as he watched Bathsheba taking a bath. David’s desire for her was kindled. If he had not acted on that desire to have sex with his neighbor’s wife, one might say: “No harm; no foul.” But David doesn’t resist the temptation; he gives in to it.

    The first immoral act takes place when David summons Bathsheba to appear at once before him. That is an act of “hubris”: pride. It’s a misuse of his power, his royal status, his ability to issue commands to his subjects. In our day we would say it’s a blatant case of sexual harass-ment, where one in authority makes inappropriate demands upon one’s subordinates. The lust in David’s heart becomes a sin in deed when he takes Bathsheba to his bed-chamber and consummates adultery.
It’s adultery since both of them are married to other people.

    In other words, the sex act in itself is not sinful. It’s David’s choice of Bathsheba to be his sex-partner, when she is married to someone else, that is the sin. He, too, is married to someone else (and we’ll get into that next Sunday!)

    What I want you to notice this morning, though, is that sexuality is not “immorality.” That may surprise you to hear, so let me say it again: “Sexuality” is not immorality. (I think we may have to define our terms yet once more.)

    “Morality” has to do with right or wrong behavior, as it affects other people.

    The dimension of “morality” arises whenever something we do affects another. For an action to be “immoral” means others are affected in an ill-way by your decision: what you do hurts or harms them.

    To be “moral” simply means you have not harmed anyone by your action: your decision has enhanced them, or empowered them, or at least left them in peace. If your action affects only you, then there is no question of its “morality” (by definition)! The “moral dimension” is null and void if your deed only affects yourself. “Morality,” by definition, is measured by its effect upon other people.

    If you only think something, but take no action on that thought, there is no moral consequence, regardless of what you may be thinking. Or if your behavior affects no ill upon anyone, then there is again (by definition) no “moral dimension” -- no sin has been done. Sin is a personal moral decision which produces ill-being or ill-will in others.

    Still (as we’ve have already noted), certain “tendencies toward sin” have become institutionalized in our society, rationalized, and very often excused. “Times have changed...” we say. “C’mon, everybody’s doing it!” Frankly, it’s not easy to be moral in an immoral world.

    Some sins have become so common, so accepted, that they are almost expected -- like having sex on prom night, or getting drunk at college... (“Who’s it gonna hurt?” we ask.) I’ve said it before: to hold Christian ethics is considered a liability in some circles & businesses.

    Let me now say, for the record: “Lust” is not the first, nor the worst, of the seven deadly sins... even though it is the most passionate of them, & it strikes us straight on! There’s no mistaking the ill effects of giving in to LUST. It’s a temptation too many people say “yes” to. Without a doubt, King David committed the sin of lust -- first, in his heart as he watched Bathsheba bathing; then, in his act of summoning Bathsheba to his bedchamber to consummate adultery with her.

    But the story is about much more than David’s voyeurism and lusty passions. It’s luxuria, luxuria!   A personal inclination toward pleasure & delight, an intense longing or craving! It is “lascivus” -- “wanton” or “lewd,” an intense sexual desire or urge.

    David was immoral in his behavior, which (at the very least) would be a disappointment to God, against whom every sin is personally felt.

    But beyond his insult to God, David’s primary sin is toward Bath-sheba… by taking advantage of his high position to command her compliance; and by taking advantage of his high house to peek down on her! Today, we would call David a “Peeping Tom” or a “dirty old man.”

    David was immoral in his behavior (secondly) toward Uriah, his faithful friend and loyal soldier. First, it was clearly immoral for David to initiate an adulterous affair with Uriah’s wife. At the very least, that was a rude thing to do to Uriah; a betrayal of his trust, an unforgivable breach of neighborliness. Remember, the 10th Commandment is “Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s wife!” Not to mention his failure to keep the 7th Commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

    David was further immoral toward Uriah in his attempts to cover it up, when Bathsheba was found to be pregnant. Especially on the second night, when David forced Uriah to get drunk in hopes that he’d weaken his resolve and go home to sleep with his wife... Please note that none of those sins were sexual, but they far outweigh the brief blaze of sexual passion that started the whole unfortunate episode.

    David was immoral (third) as regards Joab, his Army commander -- giving illegal (and immoral) orders by which his own troops would be slain! David was immoral in sending troops out to war while he stayed home (in luxury) – something Uriah made very clear, by refusing to sleep in his own bed, while Israel’s troops were camped out in battle-lines. David was immoral, above all else, in demanding the Hittite’s death! He murders Uriah in order to cover up his adultery!

    Unfortunately, David didn’t see any of that as “immoral.”

    To this day, many of us are quick to point fingers at any suspected “sexual immorality” while letting the really big sins (matters of pride, violence, abuse of power, betrayal...) go unchecked.

    You may remember when the Assemblies of God stripped two of their big name “TV-evangelists” of their ordination -- Jim Bakker & Jimmy Swaggart -- for having confessed adultery and having consorted with prostitutes. And yet we don’t seem to much mind the other six sins in our leaders: pride & greed run rampant, and we don’t seem to notice! A man may be greedy & grasping; selfish & spiteful; unscrupulous, un-just, jealous; violent... even cruel!; he may be lying, arrogant, stubborn, stupid, depressing, & dull... and yet we are not ready to call HIM immoral. That distinction we save, it seems, for the sin of lust alone.

    And so, the Church inflicts its own brand of damage on the psyches and sexuality of our young people, by our fascination with sexuality as sin, and our failure to see it as God’s most powerful gift for intimacy (an expression of love and commitment)!

    Well, David lost the glory of his kingdom due to his lust for Bathsheba. The tragedy of his “fall from grace” is well known to us. His lust led to adultery & led to pregnancy. (As an aside: can you imagine how Solomon felt when he learned this was his mother & his father’s story?) The sin of Lust led to adultery, cover-up, drunkenness, betrayal, & murder! The death of Uriah the Hittite was “government sanctioned,” but it was nonetheless a murder of an innocent man.

    David’s lusty imagination, when indulged, triggered a chain reaction of other sins...and ended badly. David’s story shows, better than any other, that LUST is a fool’s game.

    Some people, like David, feel free to act from lust because they have the power! It is not love/sex among equals! Some people act from their LUST, because they suppose no one will ever “find out.” They think they’ll just carry it as a secret in their heart.

    While there may be a few who do “get away with it” in this life -- disregarding the calluses that grow on their heart from the little lies they must tell to “cover” their dirty little secret -- but I am absolutely certain that there are far more who are found out. They just never dreamed they’d be caught!

    So, “was it worth it?” The answer for David, the now-corrupted king, is the same for us: “No...”

    “The risks are too great for love-making to be casual (instead of committed). The pain which is inflicted (upon one-self, one’s spouse, kids, society) is too hard to repair, and too heavy to bear. The stakes are too high. Only a fool plays this game!”

    We call it “making love;” but lust actually breaks love... Lust breaks hearts & homes; it breaks reputations, and breaks lives. Thus, it is a deadly sin! Lust is not love! Not in the least! And yet, it is an easy mistake to make, since some of the outward behavior which marks “lust” is also a hallmark of true love. Intimacy, nudity, flirting fun, seductive behavior... Let me be perfectly clear (for any young people here): we cannot “make love” when our motive is “lust!” Lust is a perversion of love -- a twisting of love into its very opposite!

    Yes, you heard me correctly... Hate is not the opposite of love. LUST is the opposite of love! Hate has a lot more to do with the sins of envy, anger, & pride, than it has anything to do with “love-making.” Lust is the opposite of love, and that’s why it is so devilishly easy to twist the words around each other.

    While others around us may be content to live lives that fulfill their lusts -- pursuing luxuria and what they can get out of it for themselves, regardless of who gets hurt -- we Christians are called to live lives that express love: love of self, love toward others, and love of God. By the power of the Holy Spirit, may we be freed from our lusts and become motivated by love!
                                        Amen!

“How the Mighty Have Fallen” based on II Samuel 1:23 thru 2:7

2011-07-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

July 10, 2011

    As we prepare for the Fourth of July (Independ- ence Day) celebrations later in the week, it seems most appropriate that our Scripture lesson this Sunday focuses on the transfer of power -- handing over the reins of government -- from King Saul (in ancient Israel) to the new king, David.

    Two weeks ago, we heard the story of David being “anointed” by the prophet Samuel. Anointed (or Christ-ened, Messiah-ed) was a formal ceremony by which he would be ordained the next king of Israel, after Saul. That event took place many years before David actually began to rule. He had a lot of growing up to do; wars to fight; songs to write; giants to slay...

    Last Sunday we heard a second story of young David, as he defeated the Philistine warrior, Goliath.

    In that sermon, I lifted up David’s words: “The battle is the Lord’s!” And I suggested two principles were at work: First, a sense of “divine destiny” -- the belief that God has a plan for your life, your people, your nation; and that your deeds, as you act on the side of God, will make a difference. Divine destiny.

    And, second, the reminder that God doesn’t “play favorites.” God doesn’t side with any one nation (or race or religion), per se; it is up to people, through their values and attitudes and behavior, to see to it that they are in line with God’s Will. In other words, we can join God’s team; but we can never presume that God has joined ours. The battle is the Lord’s. (That was last Sunday’s sermon.)

    This week we are several years further along in David’s story. He has grown up and he is married. He lived for many years “like a son” in King Saul’s house -- like a brother to Jonathan, the crown-prince. They were best of friends. David has become famous both as a singer (inventer of the harp and writer of many Psalms) and as a soldier for Israel (having killed tens of thousands of Philistines and other invaders).

    But David also fell out of favor with King Saul, whose “big ego” couldn’t stand seeing David loved and honored more than they loved King Saul.

    Saul felt “threatened” by David, even though David intended him no harm. This is not the last time in human history when a boss, with a big ego and only marginal competence, has turned against the best and brightest among his associates for fear of being surpassed. (I suspect many of you and I have worked for just such a boss at some time in our careers!)   This is not the last time a king turned against his subjects, but it is one of the most tragic.

    Saul, in a fit of insecurity, twice tried to kill David. The king eventually declared that David (his loyal colleague and commander of Israel’s Army) had become a “traitor” (which wasn’t true), and King Saul launched a full-fledged war against David. It tore up his family, it caused confusion among the citizens, and it weakened his Army. It wasn’t long before Saul and Jonathan died in battle.

    Today’s Scripture began at that point: David weeping for Saul, and lamenting the death of his friend, Jonathan. “How the mighty have fallen...!”

    The egomania and insecurity of King Saul not- withstanding, David wept upon hearing of his death.

    And the words Davod spoke about Jonathan are among the most tender in all the Bible: “I am distres- sed for you, my brother Jonathan. Greatly beloved were you to me. Your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women.”

    The insanity of King Saul, and David’s official status as a “traitor,” did not reduce the fact that the first King of Israel was now dead, and so was his son, the heir apparent to the throne. Israel will need a new leader. A new monarchy. David turns to the Lord and asks: “what shall I do?”

    “Settle in Hebron,” was the answer. And there, together with his wives and all the “outlaw soldiers” who sided with David, another “anointing” took place. The people of the tribe of Judah christened David as their king.

    His first official act as their king was to extend a word of blessing to the followers of King Saul, to the people in Gilead who buried him, so they would know the animosity was over. “May the Lord/Yahweh show steadfast love and faithfulness to you... Be valiant, and let your hands be strong. For Saul, your lord, is dead; and the house of Judah has anointed me king over them.”

    So, the transfer of power from the King of Israel to the King of Judah -- from Saul to David -- though set in a bloody time of war, was not a “Revolution.” The war was based on egoism and insecurity, not on an effort to change the form of government. And once Saul’s line had died out, a new bloodline (David’s) was appointed to the throne. Monarchy continued...

    How different was the American War of Inde- pendence. It was truly a “revolution.” In place of monarchy, we designed “presidency.” In place of bloodlines, we designed “elections.” In place of the assassination of one’s opponents, we designed “term limits.” The American Revolution was not merely a Civil War (citizens efforts to overthrow their rulers); it was an effort to change the very form of government.

    It seems strange to me that America should look at revolutions everywhere else on our globe as some- thing “evil” -- even to the point of sending our mili- tary into those wars of liberation, usually (ironically) on the side of the oppressor regime rather than the freedom-fighters! -- and yet consider our own revolu- tion as something to be revered. The 4th of July “up- rising” in 1776 is celebrated with fireworks & parades & political speeches, while other uprisings and revo- lutions are squelched as a matter of state security!

    Have you ever considered what “America” would have meant nowadays if those delegates to the Continental Congress had refused to sign that docu- ment on July 4, 1776? What do you think Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin would be called today if the war had gone the other way? Do you realize how Benedict Arnold would have climbed in our esteem?

    As David discovered, much to his regret, the label “traitor” is bestowed by the people in power. And it sticks... so long as those same folks are writing the history. If they’re defeated, history gets rewritten.

    If the American Revolution had failed, our class- rooms would not have portraits of George Washington & Abraham Lincoln & William Jefferson Clinton -- but rather the watchful eye of Queen Elizabeth -- as we studied about an unfortunate uprising back in 1776, that ended with the hanging of men like Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry.

    Of course, maybe it wouldn’t be like that at all. Maybe (if the Revolution had failed) others would have taken up the cause of democracy & anti-coloni- alism. Maybe other voices would have (eventually) settled the disputes over taxation & representation in London’s Parliament. One never knows.

    But I have found, as I say in my sermon title, that the unique originality of our American Revolu- tion stands out as we compare it against others.

    Zaire is now called the Republic of the Congo. A long war of native militiamen against a tyrant’s standing Army has come to a close... but where is the declaration of principles of human rights that the new administration is committed to follow? Where was it in the Civil War in Somalia, and in the bloody battles of Rwanda? When Hutu & Tutsi trade off “being in charge,” all we seem to get is more blood- shed; only the tribal allegiance of the victims changes.

    Very few of our modern-day revolutions (with the possible exceptions of the Iranian fundamentalist takeover & the Nicaraguan Sandinistas) feel obligated to make a declaration of principles, such as America did 221 years ago. All they seem to have in mind is a change of administration (of who’s in power); they do not seem to be attempting a revolution that touches the very principles of human society. America did!

    Some nations -- like India, Egypt, Tunesia, Zim- babwe -- struggled long and won their independence with relatively little bloodshed. But, having establish- ed themselves as nation-states, have not looked much beyond that. They got what they were after...They were satisfied. Now they strive only to make themselves greater, richer, more respected.

    The founders of the United States of America did not consider it enough merely to fight for their own independence. They gave the world a true revolution, a change of spirit! Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Washington seem to have known instinct- ively that it is at the very moment when a nation is in danger of losing all that it has, that it must give the most of itself to the world. It is then that heroes are needed.

    David, the youngest son-of-a-shepherd, may have remained an unknown peasant, lost in the depths of human history, had he not been given a mission (“anointed”); and had he not heard a call from Goliath that needed an answer from Yahweh; and had he not relied (in faith) on God’s steadfast love through all the hell King Saul had put him.

    His first act as king (extending blessing to the loyal followers of his adversary) paved the way for a United Monarchy under God. “Love you enemies, and pray for your persecuters” Jesus said 1,000 years later. That’s exactly what David did as the new king. It wasn’t a revolution, but it was a good start to have at the helm, a man with a good heart.

    As I said in last Sunday’s sermon: If we want America to be in the Winner’s Circle in the 21st century, it is up to us to “get in step” with God.

    While he was President, Dwight D. Eisenhower challenged the American people with these words:
“If we are to win the beliefs and hearts of men, we have to return to the fundamentals. Our founding fathers said it was a religious concept they were trying to translate into government... Our govern- ment has no sense unless deeply rooted in religious faith.” (I hope you noticed he said “return to the fundamentals” not to the fundamentalists!)

    And what are the fundamentals of the American Revolution? I’ll speak of them more next Sunday, but for now suffice to say they are the same faith that sustained the shepherd boy in his battle against the giant and (later) against the king: replacing our narrow “ego” desires with a sense of divine destiny -- that the battle is the Lord’s, and that in God we trust.

    It is my prayerful hope that the vast “silent ma- jority” of Americans, who have watched the narrow- ing of our liberties, the betrayal of our trust by civic leaders, and who have endured the denigration of God in public debate, will boldly & willingly recommit ourselves to those ideals afresh. (Happy 4th of July!)

“Surface Appearances” based on I Samuel 15:34 thru 16:13

2011-07-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

July 3, 2011

    In today’s story, from the Book of Samuel, we meet the Messiah -- “meshiach”: the Lord’s Anointed -- for that’s what the word means in Hebrew. We Christians tend to use the title “messiah” exclusively for Jesus, forgetting that it is derived from the coronation ceremony of the Jewish kings. Today we meet the first Messiah, the Lord’s “chosen leader”: the “anointed” one, David.

    If you are surprised to learn that the Bible’s first Messiah (the Lord’s “Anointed One”) is the boy, David (the youngest son of a common working-class shepherding family in Bethlehem), you are not alone in that surprise. Even Samuel was surprised!

    Surely, if God was to select “the best and the brightest” from among the people of Israel, it would be someone with wealth and power! Someone tall and handsome, strong of stature, with an authoritative, commanding presence. After all, it’s no easy job being the Lord’s Anointed, the Chosen “Messiah!”

        Samuel, who can be considered the last of the judges and the first of the prophets, had been tasked by God to find someone appropriate to serve as the head of state of the kingdom of Israel. Saul, who was the first king of Israel -- one who had been elected by a unanimous outcry of the people (a man who stood “head and shoulders above the rest”) who had been selected from an influential family – Saul was charismatic and handsome! These are characteristics we still look for in our politicians and celebrities: they’ve gotta look good on camera!

    As the first King of Israel, Saul had let the acclaim and the power of his position go to his head. He thought he was “above the law” (as do so many wealthy and powerful folks in our own day!). Because Saul was the “king,” it meant that he was the law-maker, the ultimate authority to whom everyone else was a “subject.”

    It’s a sin of hubris – pride – that monarchs and other social elites often fall victim to: those that make the laws (who set the rules) too often feel free to exempt themselves from having to obey those laws.

    Take for example “franking” privilege extended to Senators and members of Congress, who can simply put their signature on the front of a letter and it goes through the US Postal System for free. The ones who set the prices of stamps for the rest of us, are themselves exempt!

    Our lawmakers have established their own private pension plan such that they need not be under Social Security – a public trust fund that those same politicians have been raiding and spending on other government programs. Their own pensions are not at risk, as are ours.

    I could go on, but you get the drift. King Saul thought he could do as he pleased, since he was the King! He thought he could do as he pleased, regardless of God.

    King Saul had been successful in battle. The newly consolidated Kingdom of Israel was militarily secure under Saul in a way it had never been during the generations of the Judges. Under King Saul, all police powers and economic authority was consolidated under his command, unified and centralized.

    Not only was Israel consolidating its power under Saul, Israel was growing rich by the plunder of its Canaanite neighbors as well as the tribute paid to the King. By those measures, Saul was prospering and Israel had becomes a kingdom the neighbors had to reckon with. But… Saul had not been successful in the eyes of God, who looks upon the hearts of people.

    Military might and the accumulation of wealth is not how God measures success. Saul’s power went to his head. He disobeyed God by building a statue in his own honor and by keeping the spoils of war for himself. (I Samuel 15:10-19) Our story begins with these words: “Samuel grieved over Saul, and the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.” What a sad testimony (a sad legacy) that is.

    But God has a plan of action. In the Bible, God never judges a situation without offering either (a) an alternative path (for which the advance warning should prompt a change of direction, or a change of heart, a turning around (what the church calls “repentance”). Or (b), if no change is forthcoming and the consequences become dire, God will provide a relief, or a rescue, or a redeemer, so that the people may recover from the error of their ways.

    Samuel, as the spiritual leader of the nation -- as the judge who had sworn Saul into office and as the prophet who spoke God’s Word (even if it opposed the decrees of the King) -- Samuel was to go to the little town of Bethlehem and find a new king from among Jesse’s sons.

    At first, Samuel is afraid to obey, knowing that King Saul would kill him if he found out. You see, to the people in power, the coming of a new “messiah” (a new leader, redeemer, rescuer) is seen as a threat. You are “taking sides” politically whenever you try to hold your rulers (your overlord, your boss) accountable to a higher authority than them-selves! To publicly follow God’s leadership, instead of supporting the ruling powers, would be considered an act of disloyalty (even treason)!

    Samuel is afraid for his life if he does what God has suggested: to anoint a new king to replace King Saul. It makes me think of those patriots in 1776, who drafted -- and then publicly signed -- the Declaration of Independence (the 235th Anniversary of which we celebrate tomorrow with the national “Independence Day” holiday). Those 56 colonial men were risking their lives!

    The representatives from each of the 13 colonies who met in the Philadelphia State House were people of considerable means and well-educated.
Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, like John Adams. Nine were farmers and owners of large plantations, like Thomas Jefferson. King George III had denounced all rebels in America as traitors and had sent regiments of his “red-coat” British Army to find and arrest them. The punishment for treason against the King was hanging. That was the risk those 56 men were running as they placed their names on the Declaration of Independence, which final sentence reads: “For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other: our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

    I would assume that fear and trembling is part and parcel of every “anointed one” who decides to put God’s desires ahead of the state’s rules. Jesus, the Christian Messiah, knew that risk as well… and as we all know: he was executed for “treason” by the people in power in his day. Following God’s will, as a Messiah must, will bring a person into conflict with the vested interests of people in power. That’s why prophets of old were mocked, rejected, imprisoned, and even stoned to death… and that’s why Jesus was crucified!

     To focus on things of God (which are: attitudes of the heart, matters of morality, looking at the consequences of our actions, drawing implications of ethical behavior, being willing to believe that a better world is possible, and willing to make the necessary changes to achieve it), is risky business – then as well as now! To bring public attention to things of God instead of simply supporting the rulers and going along with the status quo, is a cause for fear and trembling!

    “If Saul hears of it, he will kill me,” says Samuel. And when Samuel arrives in Bethlehem, the elders of the city (who know who he is, and whom he speaks for!) came to meet him: they were trembling!

    “Do you come peaceably?” they ask; for the judge (the prophet, the one who speaks God’s word) brings unrest, dis-quiet, un-easy feelings that things are not right. Whenever the status quo encounters the Word of God, the elders (who are the enforcers) begin to squirm!

    Samuel gathers the people of Bethlehem, sanctifies them, and then starts a procession of young men... Jesse’s sons. Eliab, the eldest, must be the one (Samuel thinks) because patriarchal custom gives precedence to the first-born son. It was simply assumed that the father’s authority within the family would go first & foremost to his first-born son.

    The laws of Moses insisted that the eldest receive double whatever the other siblings received by way of inheritance. To this day, even in radically egalitarian societies such as ours here in America strives to be, the family’s reliance upon the older brother or older sister to be the “responsible” ones in the family is simply assumed to be how it has to be! It’s their social role!

    But seniority is no credential with God. The Lord does not judge as mortals do. Patriarchial (patrilinial) succession based on seniority is a cultural custom, friends, not God’s way! I hope that is no surprise!

    Seniority has become a primary criterion in Congress and Senate appointments to committees, and it’s important to military rank (where time in grade, plus time in service, pretty much sets your “pay grade”). Seniority still has a lot to do with teacher hirings and firings, with civil service jobs and at the Post Office, and it plays a role in “unionized” labor relations: Last hired, first fired. Most Americans value seniority.

    But, as I said, seniority is no credential with God. The Lord does not judge as mortals do. Jesse’s first-born son, the elder, is voted out!

    Then Jesse called Abinadab, and everyone was impressed by the second son’s size. Strength and stature, surely, would be important to God in choosing the next king. But Samuel admits: “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” If not seniority, and not one’s size & stature, what is God looking for in a person?

    Before we go on, let me ask you: “What does the Lord require of you?” (We say it often: Micah 6:8.) To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God! What matters to God is: To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God! According to Psalm 24, God is looking for one who has clean hands, and a pure heart, who has not lifted up their soul unto vanity, and who does not swear deceitfully.” That’s God’s criteria for a good role model, a civic leader.

    Let me repeat those seven virtues -- to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God, with “clean hands” (that is, no bloodshed, no injustice) and a “pure heart” (that is, with no self-serving agenda, no secret immorality like Anthony Wiener’s “sex”ting photos), refusing vanity, refusing to swear deceitfully -- where is any of that in our quest for new leaders, for celebrities, for the next American Idol?

    Sure, it would be nice to find some of that in our politicians, but let’s get real. Politics is a dirty, cut-throat business and you need money, stature, and ruthlessness to win! Christian virtues tend to be seen as liabilities in the worlds of business, politics, & war.

    In today’s story, Samuel has declined Eliab’s seniority, much to everyone’s surprise. He then declined Abinadab’s strength and stature. When Shammah, Jesse’s handsome middle son, passes by, Samuel thinks: “Surely, the Lord’s anointed is he.” But God’s word startles us all: “Do not look on his appearance, nor on the height of his stature... for the Lord does not see as mortals see. They look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart!”

    When I was a teen-ager living in Michigan, I used to paint houses during the summer to earn a bit of money. One of the paint companies (I recall) had as its advertising slogan: “Save the surface, and you save everything.”

    Of course, the paint manufacturers meant that a new coat of paint on your house or your fence would keep the weather out and the moisture from seeping into the wood. It would block termite damage & reflect the harsh sunlight. Walls & barns, & eves & porches, would last longer with a new coat of paint. It’s how I made money. OK.

    But I knew that too many people were living their lives and making their decisions with the false idea that “if you save the surface, you’ve saved everything!” And that’s a lie!

    Churches were full of people with plastic smiles -- praising the Lord on the surface, but crushed with defeat and loneliness, enduring abuse at home, or harassment in the workplace, with all kinds of loss and despair beneath that “Christian” mask. They were good at saving the surface, while their inner lives were dying!

    One of the reasons I chose to go into the ministry was to help our church members to get inside their own stories, to face their fears and hidden hurts; to let the mask slip a bit in a safe & loving – even thera-peutic community. I knew that such open “warts & all” honesty was not the traditional reason people came to church, but I believe that’s the kind of church that Jesus wanted: a place where people could remove their religious mask and get to the raw & risky faith, the hopes & pos-sibilities of a fully human life, which would be contagious such that the community of love (extravagant welcome) would change the world!
(No one ever accused me of not having lofty goals!)

    And I believe that it is not only possible to be that kind of church, but that Los Altos UCC is already on that road. We just need to move forward at a sustainable pace. We don’t want to scare anyone away with too many changes coming too fast. Relationships take time to mature.

    We all know families who don’t want their neighbors to know what is really going on in their marriages... They would subscribe to the slogan: Save the surface and you’ve saved everything! It’s a lie! It’s empty vanity. It’s hypocrisy. But when you’re afraid to let the truth be seen, the box you’re living in can become stiflingly small!

    “The Lord does not see as mortals see. They look on the outward appearance,     but the Lord looks on the heart!”

    How often I’ve wanted teenagers to know that their outer appearance is not who they are. (But that’s pretty much futile.)

    Samuel’s search for the Messiah, as recorded in the Bible, is a lesson we all need to learn. The world of traditional social values will often lead us astray by accenting attributes that (while assumed to be universal) are far from the heart of God.

    Seniority. Whether seniority in age (giving more credit & weight to the opinions of our elders and less respect to the youngers) or seniority in status (where you get more pay as the senior partner than as an associate, more respect is given to the senior minister’s opinion than to the youth minister’s). Whether one’s concept of “seniority” is based on relative age or relative status, it can lead us away from God’s true desires by giving preference (favoritism) to one “category” of person over another.

    In God’s eyes we are all of the same seniority. (I mean, what’s the difference between a 9-year-old and a 90-year-old when seen in the light of God’s eternity?) In God’s eyes, we are all of us worthy of respect, every one of us able to be agents of God.

    Samuel said to Jesse: “Are all your sons here?” “There remains yet the youngest,” Jesse replied, “but he’s working, keeping the sheep.” “Bring him,” said Samuel, “for we will not sit down until he comes!”

    Everyone was surprised! This was a reversal of all expectations! Samuel would prefer the youngest… not the oldest? The ruddy, hard-working field-hand, a mere boy, nothing but a common shepherd – in place of the handsome soldier-boys, or the first-born inheritors -- this is the one chosen by God to be “anointed” as king?

    Yes! Little David. The Psalm singer with the sling-shot! The harp-playing, song-writing, little shepherd boy, David. If he’s good enough for God to bless and to anoint as a future leader of his people, well, then there’s hope for every one of us!

    Perhaps we, too, can break the bad habit of trusting surface appearances, and (like God) try our best to look on the heart.

"The Battle Is The LORD’s!" based on I Samuel, Chapter 17:1-11, 31-37, & 41-50

2011-06-26T10:02:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

June 26, 2011

    Hear again one sentence from the story that the prophet Samuel records for us... the story of David and Goliath. These are the words young David used to explain why he fought the Philistine:

    “So that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel,
    and [so that] all this assembly may know that the Lord does
    not save by sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s, and
    God will give you into our hand.” (I Sam. 17:46-47)

    Good words, worth memorizing! Brave words, especially when put in the context of a young shepherd-boy facing a nine-foot tall, fully armed & armored, soldier! A man with at least ten years of combat training, with the very latest in Bronze Age weaponry, a veteran champion of many battles: the Philistine super-soldier Goliath!

    What audacity! What absurdity, to think of this young, untrained shepherd-boy, armed only with a sling, hurling insults at the reigning champion! What nerve. Who does David think he is? Samson?

    There are many principles we can learn from David’s success in bringing the giant down, but (to me) the key is found in the phrase: “...the battle is the Lord’s!...” He believes, with youthful passion, that God is involved. And because the battle is the Lord’s battle, even the smaller ones (the fledgling, the youngsters like him) can succeed.

    So, the first principle (I believe) is to remember that the destiny of the world is in the hands of God. (I hope that lifts a burden from your shoulders!) It’s not up to you or me to succeed; that’s God’s job.

    In the hustle of daily business and the bustle of daily routines, we may forget the overarching patterns of power, the trends and lessons of history. It is so easy to forget the powerful reality & presence of God when most of our day is focused on “little me” and our humble horizon of narrow self-interest.

    The soldiers of Israel, apparently, forgot that “the battle is the Lord’s!” Saul, their king (their commander-in-chief), had long since forgotten that he was God’s servant. “When Saul and all Israel heard the words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.”
(I Sam. 17:11) When the Jewish soldiers saw Goliath, the Philistine champion, they fled from him… and their King (Saul, who stood a head and shoulders taller than the rest, and who was himself already an acclaimed war-hero) was afraid.

    But there was someone in Israel who believed that the destiny of the world was not in the hands of the giants (nor in the hands of soldiers & kings, for that matter), but in the hands of God/Yahweh -- someone who believed that the battle is the Lord’s -- and it is that faith (that trust in God!) which plunged David into deeds of greatness.

    In the story, everyone is surprised at David’s courage. But they ought not to have been surprised. After all, it was in much that same way that their nation was founded... It was the call of divine destiny coming to a middle-aged shepherd named Moses, exiled from Egypt, grazing his father-in-law’s flock in the mountain wilderness of Sinai, who heard God say: “I am Yahweh, the God of Israel, and I am with you.” A call to serve that sent a stuttering, stammering Moses to confront Pharaoh and to change the face of history. That’s Israel’s primary story in all of Torah: the Exodus! The battle is the Lord’s; not Pharaoh’s, not the Egyptian Army’s! (After all, in the end, the mighty charioteers drowned in the Red Sea.) God was really the one in charge.

    David’s boldness should not have surprised the soldiers, for it is the story of Moses (and of Joshua, and of Gideon and the judges) all over again. God is in charge, not the kings, nor the soldiers.
God saves, not with sword & spear, nor with chariots, nor even with giant walls (remember the battle of Jericho?). The soldiers should have remembered their basic Bible history 101: the battle is the Lord’s!

    Nor should this story of little David come as a surprise to us “Christians,” for our primary story similarly suggests that the call of divine destiny comes to an unwed peasant girl (Mary); and her son, Jesus, born in a barn! People of no account, and yet who brought the presence of God alive in Israel with such relevance and in such power that it eventually out-distances the entire Roman Empire; the Gospel of Jesus Christ has out-lived the history of every nation since year 1!

    The battle is the Lord’s! And God can recruit whomever God chooses: little David (a Bethlehem shepherd-boy) or young Mary (an unwed-Galilean girl)… or maybe even little you-&-me! The call of divine destiny comes to a rural fisherman on the Lake of Galilee (Simon Peter), and transforms him into a “fisher of men.” The Rock! The call comes to an I.R.S. agent, a tax collector (Matthew Levi), and he enrolls citizens into a new kingdom (the kingdom of God).

    The call comes from God to “the least of these, (my brethren)” and a new world is born! A new creation! History is forever changed by those little people who know that “the battle is the Lord’s!”

    Moments in history may seem to serve one nation or another. Back in July of 1997, the world watched the sun set on the formerly great British Empire, as the governing of Hong Kong reverted to the Chinese. Before the First & Second World Wars, European nations claimed colonies throughout the East Indies and everywhere in Africa. Now those same nations cluster like twelve small stars in a circle, claiming only Europe itself as a Common Market. What used to be their individual nation’s world-wide economic and military reach has been reduced to the narrow confines of their Old World homelands.

     Some historians suggest that the 20th Century will be known as the “Great American Century,” since the United States played such a huge role around the globe.
But by naming it such (the American Century), those historians are also marking it off from the present century, since our national impact (as a part of the world’s economy as well as a military force) will soon be surpassed technologically & economically by “globaliz-ation” in the 21st Century. The day of American power (they say) is past.

    The helm of history always seems to belong to some great Army, or to some masterful ideology (like Nazi Fascism or Soviet communism), for a time. But, ultimately, history is being guided silently by a “Higher Power” greater than Pharaoh or the Roman Caesars at the peak of their splendor; greater than Napoleon, sweeping unchallenged through Europe; greater than Alexander, weeping for more worlds to conquer.

    I believe that what David was really saying (when he accepted the challenge to fight Goliath) was that God had plans to use Israel as a special agent (a change agent)… to use Israel as an instrument to bring divine blessing to all the world; and no giant, however powerful, was going to thwart the Lord’s plans. David simply knew in his heart that the one who trusted in God would win. So, don’t be afraid!

    The warrior champion, Goliath, and his Philistine comrades, were “out of step” with the Supreme Commander’s battle plan. And they were doomed to be defeated despite their arrogance, ruthlessness, size.

    American poet James Russell Lowell reminds us (in the words we sang as our middle hymn “Once to Every Man & Nation”):
    “Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ’tis truth alone is strong.
    Truth, forever on the scaffold; wrong, forever on the throne.
    Yet that scaffold sways the future! And, behind the dim unknown,
    standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.”

    When the God who stands in the shadows, keeping watch, sides with a little David against a giant Goliath -- sides with a rag-tag bunch of American colonial settlers against Mother England’s seasoned soldiers…
…or sides with a Corazon Aquino against Marcos’ over- whelming troops in the Philippines, or sides with peasant Sandinistas in Central America against government death squads, or sides with an Ayatollah’s devout followers against a secular Shah’s military machine, or sides with dirt-poor peasant Bolsheviks against a Czar’s overwhelm-ing wealth & power) -- it sways the future! When truth is on the scaffold, and wrong is on the throne (by God), reversals will come!

    Now, back to David... On the surface, it may appear that the cards were stacked against the Philistines from the beginning, since God is said to have “chosen” Israel. But that’s not necessarily so.

    Remember, Israel was only victorious when they were in step with divine destiny through their obedience to God’s will (for justice at home and blessing abroad) and when they kept God’s moral command- ments. Throughout the Old Testament (the Hebrew Scriptures), each & every time they were disobedient (or “unjust”), and some other power was more in step with God, the Jews were conquered by their enemies.

    Which is the second principle to keep in mind: God doesn’t play favorites! God takes sides with no nation, per se. God is not a tribal God, nor a nationalist. God is not a racist. It is up to Israel to side with God; and when they don’t, it’s up to someone like David to do it on their behalf, even if he has to do it all alone. Which suggests to me that it is still up to us, my friends, to side with the Lord if we want America to be in the Winner’s Circle.

    But how do we know if we are “siding with the Lord”?

    First: we do those things which bring honor & glory to the God of Israel: doing justice at home and extending blessing abroad. What does the Lord require of you? “To do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” (That’s a start, friends. Micah 6:8)

    According to Jesus, we are to “love our neighbors” in the same way “as we love ourselves,” showing no partiality. (Mark 12:31, John 13:34-35; see also James, Chapter 2)
We are to keep all the commands from our Rabbi, Jesus, but most specifically to love one another, and to forgive everyone who asks us. If you treat people in the same way as Jesus would have done (keeping the “Golden Rule” and all that jazz), you can act boldly, knowing that you’re on God’s side... dead or alive!

    And so, David ventured alone onto a battlefield to face a giant...

    Whether he would come back dead or alive, he wanted the world to know that the battle is the Lord’s! So, too, Mohandas Gandhi refused to honor the British Mandate in India; so, too, John Hancock signed his name boldly across the bottom of our Declaration of Independence. These were people of enormous moral character, people with faith in God (in step with God) and therefore in step with history.

    It is no small thing that American coins & currency are minted with the words “In God We Trust” on them. For it is that thought which sustained the shepherd lad in his battle against the giant. “In God We Trust!” … the battle is the Lord’s!

    It is that thought which motivated our early American statesmen to declare independence from England. “In God We Trust!”   It is that thought which can replace our narrow, personal “ego” desires with a sense of divine destiny... knowing that the battle we wage for the good of the world is the Lord’s battle! We can take “risks” because (ultimately) we trust.

    May your faith in God empower you to take an occasional risk, knowing that the ultimate outcome of our joint efforts toward the good is in God’s hands, and on God’s shoulders. Let us simply do what little part we can, within the space of time and talent and available resources that God has given us. Trusting, that the battle is the Lord’s and we’re not really facing the giant problem on our own… because God is with us, in Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Trust God! Lean into it; find that extra support, & then take action, for God’s sake.
                                        Amen!

"God Loves a Cheerful Giver" (A Stewardship sermon based on II Corinthians 9:1-8)

2011-06-05T09:54:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

June 5, 2011

    I suppose these words from the Apostle Paul are among the most familiar he ever wrote: "Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly nor under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver!" (II Corinthians 9:7)

    Since next week is the Sunday when we will receive our "pledge" forms in the worship bulletin, and, in the course of the service, we will dedicate our pledges of financial support for the programs and ministries here at Los Altos UCC, this Scripture about "giving" -- cheerful giving! -- comes immediately to mind as an appropriate text to get us ready.

    It's nice to be reminded once in a while that our offerings (of time, talents, and treasures) in service to the work of the Church are intended to be a source of joy for us and blessing for others. Our resources (of time, talents, and treasure) are freely given to us by God, in order that we in turn can share them freely with others, in Jesus' name... not begrudgingly, but willingly. We give our money to the Church, not because of guilt induced, nor from fear of financial shortfall here at the church if we don’t pay our fair share, but cheerfully, freely!

    Giving of oneself -- giving one's resources in support of the vision (and the implementation!) of the Good News of Jesus' ministry through our local church -- is supposed to be a source of joy! It should give us deep & lasting pleasure, knowing you are making a difference for the good in our world!

    But, if you’re like me, you already know that!

    So, why do we even need to be reminded that God loves a cheerful giver? Why do we even need to be asked to pledge financial support?

    If you're like me, you do it almost automatically, all through the year, because you know it is a right and good thing, and it brings you real pleasure to be able to be generous. It "feels good" to be able to "do good!" (As a matter of fact, would you please say that with me? "It feels good to be able to do good!" Thank you.)

    If you're like me, you also probably wish that you could do more -- win the lottery, perhaps! -- in order to take off the pressure the church has of having to meet our overhead operating expenses from week to week. That's part of the sign that you have a generous heart, you always want to do "a little more." And I thank each and every one of you who feels that way. I thank you not only for what you give now, which helps to pay my salary, but I thank you for the extra giving that you would like to have given, if only you had it to give. It’s the desire to be generous that is a virtue, regardless of what you can actually afford.

    Do you remember the widow in the Temple that Jesus pointed out, who had given her last two copper pennies – not much money in purchasing power – but which represented all that she had to live on? (I preached about it last October on Marathon Sunday when we worshiped at the Los Alamitos UCC church.) Jesus said that in God’s eyes, she had given more than all the wealthy men who gave only a portion of their surplus income. They still had 90% of their wealth to spend on themselves, while she had given her all! That’s why I say: it’s the desire to be generous that is a virtue, regardless of what you can actually afford. The willingness to give is a first step toward discovering what it means to be a “cheerful giver.”

    If you're like me, this is nothing new. You already know how good it feels to use your resources in ways that show real improvements – whether the improvement is by buying a new car, or by up-grading your computer or TV, or by investing in your house by adding on to it or putting in new carpet. The same thing is true when you put your resources to work in support of things that promise to make a difference in people's lives: helping pay for schools or someone’s higher education, paying taxes to refurbish our roads and provide police and fire protection, giving to the Red Cross for disaster relief or a better blood bank, giving to the Salvation Army or your church.
So, if most of us already know how good it feels to put our money where our heart is, why does Paul feel the need to write this little reminder that "God loves a cheerful giver"?

    Apparently, someone in the Corinthian Church wasn't like us. Some-one needed urging and reminding.

I especially like the "tongue in cheek" way that Paul begins Chapter 9: "It is not necessary for me to write to you about the ministry to the saints, for I know your eagerness -- [I know of your readiness to give] -- which is the subject of my boasting about you to the people of Macedonia, saying 'Achaia (that is, the Greeks who live in Corinth) have been ready since last year!' and [my telling of] your zeal has stirred up most of them!"

    But then comes the reality and the rub: after a year of promising to give, the Greek Christians in Corinth (a wealthy urban congregation, in contrast to the rural Macedonians) have yet to send along any money! And so, the Apostle Paul continues:

    "So that our boasting about you may not prove to have been empty in this case -- so that you may be ready, as I said you would be -- lest some Macedonians come with me and find that you are NOT ready… We would be humiliated (to say nothing of you) for being so confident in this undertaking."

    "So, (writes Paul) I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you, and arrange in advance for this bountiful gift that you have promised, so that it may be ready as a voluntary gift, and not as an extortion. [That your contribution be ready… not as an exaction, but as a willing gift.]"

    Tongue in cheek, perhaps... but Paul has a serious concern, nonetheless. Promises of support were made... pledges to provide financial assistance to the saints in Jerusalem were counted upon... but, after a year of waiting, the cash never came.

    It would be like (perish the thought!) that some of us were to make a pledge to support Los Altos UCC for such & such an amount, and, after a year of counting on that income, we failed to live up to our pledge. Uh-oh!

    Paul wants them to live up to their promises (their pledged support), but doesn't want it to seem like a burden to them, like a tax, or a "forced" thing. For God loves a cheerful giver, where the gift represents a willing heart. For that is the blessing which, in its turn, multiplies.

    We didn’t read it this morning, but the letter goes on in verse 12: "The rendering of this service... (that is, their giving money to support the Mother Church in Jerusalem, who were going through hard times and persecutions) not only supplies the wants of the saints (writes Paul), but also overflows in many thanksgivings to God..."

    In other words, people begin to praise God when they see that our deeds are as good as our words (or, more commonly said, that we at Los Altos UCC: "we put our money where our mouth is!").

    The "generosity" that is referred to in Scripture is not merely one's monetary resources (even though that is the Apostle Paul's primary concern in this particular chapter). Our generous giving may be of our time, as we volunteer to help (and take the time to attend) various Church activities… and our generous giving may be of our talents as we serve in a variety of formal & informal offices in the church: help with the bookkeeping, provide child-care, sing in the choir, teach Sunday School, serve on the Leadership Council. Our generosity can be shown through our use of our time and of our talents, as well as the giving of our material resources.

    Last Sunday, a dancer, Kiku, took time to come down from Montebello Plymouth UCC and used her talents here during worship as she brought the choir’s anthem "On Eagle’s Wings" to life. I will close this sermon with her affirming words:

“Last Sunday I had the distinct pleasure of attending your church and performing with your choir. It is not often that one is invited to such a lovely
church. In the past, our Pastor Mitchell had encouraged us to visit other churches and now I know why. I had become content with my own, without a desire to look beyond. Yet, at Los Altos, people were so friendly, so kind, and there was something more, a feeling of harmony, a feeling of grace. I thank the Lord for his guidance as I performed with your choir under the direction of your talented director David. I also thank Mr. & Mrs. Solt, who sent me photographs to remember. For on that day, I felt as though I had met family and had danced to the voices of angels. Thank you, and many blessings to you and your congregation.”

Sincerely,

Kiku Yamada Kobashigawa

"Using Our Money as a Blessing" based on Luke 12:42-46, and Isaiah 40:28-31

2011-05-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

May 22, 2011

    "Stewardship" is a good Old English word that one hardly hears anymore, except in the confines of churches! And then, in church, the concept of "stewardship" has become connected almost exclusively to the annual fund-raising "pledge" campaign in support of the church budget (which is precisely why I am speaking of it this morning!). The concept of "stewardship" has (for many people) come to mean "use of one’s money!"

    It is my hope to "redeem" the venerable word -- stewardship -- from the narrow (and often negative) confines of "fundraising" into which this biblical metaphor has been relegated. To be a steward is more than a matter of money; more than merely material concerns. When we stop to think of it, during a stewardship campaign, we usually talk not only about using our money, but of how we spend our time and talents as well. “The 3 T’s: Time, Talent, and Treasure.”

    This morning we had a dramatic visual experience of what it means to dedicate one’s “talents” to ministry. Kiku Yamada KobaShigawa, a member of the Japanese-American Plymouth UCC church in Montebello, shared her talent freely with us. The liturgical dance that accompanied our choir was her contribution, along with the talents of our choir members and of David Joseph at the piano, to interpret the words of Isaiah to us. I thank Kiku for being with us today, & for her generous gift of time & talent to help this morning’s worship service come together in joyful praise.

    To be a "good & faithful steward" (as Jesus says in this morning’s Scripture) is a unique role in society outlined by Jesus for his followers.
To have (at heart) the attitudes & actions of a good steward is a gift that makes a person more "Christ-like."

    Now, before I define the word "steward," let me first remind you of the brief story -- actually a parable of Jesus, as recorded by Luke:

        "Who is the faithful and wise steward?" Jesus asked. (The New Revised Standard Bible version which we read this morning replaced the word “steward” with the more modern word: “Manager.”) "Who is the faithful and wise manager?" but the answer is the same:"The one whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time."

    That, in short, is the description of a steward: one who is set "in charge" of a household economy -- a family estate, or a business -- with the task: to assure all is managed fairly, fully, and in timely fashion.

    Jesus goes on to say: "Blessed is that servant (or slave) whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions...
But if that servant [on the other hand] says: "My master is away... delayed!" And so, he beats his fellow servants, and eats and drinks with the drunkards... The master will return -- on a day when the servant does not expect him, at an hour he does not know -- and will punish him..." (In ancient days, a slave could be whipped, or worse, killed by a disgruntled master who felt he’d been disrespected.)

    It's a scary story, the way Jesus tells it… intended to warn his followers to be good stewards (to be wise!), to be sure they fully & fairly managed the affairs of the One who is their lord (their Master on earth).

    The word "steward/stewardship" appears 26 times in the Bible. It is uniformly a technical office, namely: the one who has been given the responsibility for the management of something belonging to someone else. Jesus' story draws upon that familiar Bible image.

    Usually the one to whom the steward is accountable is a royal official -- a king, a ruler, or a landlord. The first time we meet a "steward" in the Bible (in the final chapters of Genesis), it's an Egyptian official who is subject to Joseph, the Hebrew Patriarch… This is the same Joseph who had risen to the rank of Pharaoh's second-in-command because of his astute managing of resources during the seven-year famine! (You may remember that we talked about that story at the start of Lent this year.) The steward represents his Master in all affairs of state... just as Joseph himself had been given authority to negotiate all matters in Pharaoh's name. In other words, the chief steward is a powerful position!

    In the Books of the Chronicles of David the King, stewards are given responsibility for the Treasury, for vineyards, for herds & camels, & for flocks. Stewards are named right along with the division commanders of the military and the chief counselors of the twelve tribes.

    In the Book of Daniel, the steward is the official charged with the care and provisioning of the Hebrew prisoners of war. This jail steward was the one who could make decisions about the prisoner’s food and lodgings on the spot, without consulting his superiors, but he cannot set them free. Because they don't belong to him. He is only their steward...

    It is Isaiah the prophet who first draws upon the image of "steward" as a metaphor for our relationship with God (Isa. 22:15-21). He refers to Shebna, the ruler of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, as a steward whose authority is about to be taken away and given to another for having brought "shame on your master's house." What Isaiah meant by calling Shebna a “steward” (rather than calling him “Mr. Mayor” or “Honorable Governor”) was that Yahweh God the Lord was the ultimate authority (the actual owner)... and anyone who would presume to manage the affairs of God's people (anyone who assumes the mantle of "over-lord") are, in fact, only stewards of what belongs to God.

    And, as stewards, we represent God only so long as we see to the welfare of God's people with the same heart and Spirit and resources as God would do!

    It is this "prophetic metaphor" of the steward as the servant of God, assigned authority by God, for the purpose of seeing that all is managed   fairly, fully, and in timely fashion, for the household of God that Jesus uses as his metaphor for the role of the Christian. We are expected to be good and faithful stewards of the assets (the talents, time, and treasure) that God puts at our disposal day-after-day.

    As stewards of God's household, we (the disciples of Jesus) are responsible for looking after the welfare of the other servants in this household. We stewards have a clearly defined task: to see to it that those who dwell with us in this household of God are properly fed; are protected from thieves (who would rob them of their treasures). In other words, we are to stand watch over God's things and manage them appropriately.

    Dave Lampert, who spoke a moment ago about his personal sense of stewardship, is the top elected Financial Officer for our congregation. We depend on his loyalty, responsibility, integrity, consistency & transparency to keep our financial affairs in proper working order. In other words, we TREASURE our Treasurer, and all those women who faithfully count the offerings every week, & Dick Schall who keeps the records on the computer.

    Each of these financial stewards have been "deputized," so to speak, in order to carry out their several tasks. But all of us are called to be stewards of those resources that are available to us to use. We have been authorized to represent the interests of our Master, the Lord Jesus Christ. We are called, and commissioned, and cheered along in our duties, because that’s how God’s work gets done in our market-economy!

    But we are also warned not to forget who we are -- whose we are! -- lest we begin to think that WE are in charge! That Los Altos UCC belongs to us, long-time members. Or to think that we are at liberty to do as we please with what surrounds us us, or that we are free to consume all the resources God has placed in our hands! Jesus warns his disciples not to waste the opportunity they have to serve God’s greater goal by riding rough-shod over the others, or by spending on ourselves what has been given to serve others. Not to be a glutton or a drunkard or a harsh master.

     Yes, it is true that the steward in the story (the manager) is "a notch higher" in authority than the other maid-servants and men-servants in the household. But that extra authority bears with it extra responsibility... The parable ends (in Luke 12:48) with this summary statement:

        "Every one to whom much is given, much will be required. The one to whom men commit much, they'll demand the more!"

    When one is called -- chosen -- to be a steward for the Master, it is both an honor and a burden. One must do right with the resources that are put in our hands. We are chosen -- and blessed with abundant good things -- not for our own sakes, but in behalf of others... many others.

    As stewards of God's universal grace, much has been given us; hence, much is required of us as well! It is only those of us who have a measure of “discretionary” income – resources that are not already claimed for another purpose – who have the moral responsibility to think about how we are going to spend it! It’s only when you have a little “extra” money that the question of how you choose to spend it can even arise. We must presume that only those who can afford to do so will pledge on-going support of our church. If you don’t have it, don’t give it!

    Stewardship is a matter of "managing our resources." Actually, it is more correct to say that our stewardship is really the managing of God's resources. The Apostle Paul says to his Corinthian congregation:   "All things are yours... whether the world or life... the present or the future... all is yours! And you are Christ's! And Christ is God's!" (I Cor. 3:21-23)

    We are all bound up with one another! Even Jesus Christ himself is part of this chain of mutuality. Even Jesus was accountable as God's steward! How he spent his time, his talents, and his treasure let people see what was not only of value to him, but to God! Jesus used everything he had been given to spread the Good News of God’s love & forgiveness, even to the point where it cost him his life. That’s more than is asked of us, but in faithfulness to him we ought to use our Money as a Blessing to others.

“Here is Your Mother . . .” based upon John 19: 23-27

2011-05-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

May 8, 2011 -- Mother’s Day

    When Jesus was dying on the Cross, according to the Gospel of John, his mother stood nearby... along with his mother's sister, and some other women who had followed him from Galilee. The Crucifixion of Jesus was as tragic a scene as any in all of world literature. Can you imagine how his mother must have felt, as she watched her beloved baby Jesus die under such torture? It is heart-breaking, even tho’ we know there’s a resurrection in store.

    In the midst of that pathos, that pain of Crucifixion, we heard the words of today’s Scripture reading:
"When Jesus saw his mother standing there, and the disciple (whom he loved) standing near-by, he said to his mother: 'Woman, behold your son...' and he said to the disciple, 'Here is your mother...' And from that time on, this disciple took her into his home."

    Tradition holds this intimate moment to be autobiographical; that is, John was that disciple for whom Jesus redefined the mother/son relationship, and who took Mary into his home, extending to her all honor & legal rights of a son for his Mother.

    It is a surprising story, I suppose, to imagine such tenderness coming from Jesus when he is in such excruciating pain. His high regard for the role of the “Mother” says something not only about Jesus, but about Mary! The fact that she is there, with her female relatives, speaks to Mary’s courage. She also must be suffering in empathy as she watches her adult son Jesus die.

    According to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ Mother Mary lived with a sense of foreboding about the path Jesus was on from the very beginning. When he was only about a month old, Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem for the purification ritual required by Moses. While they were there, an old man named Simeon took the baby Jesus in his arms and offered a prayer of blessing on Jesus. (His prayer is called the “Nunc Dimittas” and was recited in the Latin Catholic Mass.) After his prayer (according to Luke 2:34-35), Simeon said to Jesus’ mother:
“This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed -- and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”

Mary carried that memory – those words of warning – for 30 years in her heart. Now, watching the tortured execution of her first-born son, she felt that sword -- the pain of grief -- ripping her heart out!

    There are Mothers and Dads among us who know that terrible pain of losing a child. It’s not supposed to be that way! Children are expected to outlive their parents. The grief of loss of a loved one is compounded when it is your child who dies.

    Jesus offers his Mother the only comfort he can, under the circumstances, when he says: 'Woman, here is your son...' and he said to the disciple, 'Here is your mother...' And from that time on, this disciple took Mary into his own home.

    Jesus’ concern and care for his Mother is quite remarkable under the circumstances! I think that reveals for us something of where God’s values lie -- even when we ourselves are preoccupied with our own troubles, God looks at the whole family unit. We ought to be looking out for our friends’ well-being (like Jesus did that disciple who was at the Cross, the disciple whom Jesus loved), and we ought to give some thought to taking care of our family’s well-being, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts, because any time a family member is hurting, they all share the pain.

   But there’s more to this moment than just the tenderness of a son toward his Mother (and the honoring of Mary) by assigning her a new son to take his place. There is a practical side to Jesus’ concern for his Mother. You see, in the ancient world, like so many of the lesser-developed nations of the world still today, "social security" for women -- both their economic security and their physical security (especially when they were widowed, as we presume Mary was) -- relied upon the productive labor and the protective efforts of their adult children.

The death of Mary’s eldest son (in a patriarchal society like Judea) may have thrust Mary into poverty… if there were no other male offspring or brothers to manage her affairs. Assigning that responsibility to John was like Jesus giving him the “power of attorney” or legal “guardianship” to secure Mary’s civil rights for the future.

    "Family" -- one's spouse and offspring, as well as the extended relations among sisters and cousins -- was the first line of defense the common person had against poverty. And poverty, in their day as in ours, was primarily a threat to women & children in that they might have to sell themselves into prostitution or slavery, just to maintain their lives.

    Without a man (in a patriarchal culture), women were at risk -- they might not even get met the most basic human needs (such as food & shelter) sufficient to stave off disease and early death.

    Family was the ultimate line of defense -- first, in order for young children to survive (little children need a team of care-givers, providers – a functioning family around them!), and, second, for women to have a say in an otherwise patriarchal society, mothers needed husbands and adult sons. It was only through recovering some semblance of family status that widows, orphans, and the elderly had any hope to live with respect and to be treated with dignity. It was through one’s family ties that elders could count on a secure future.

    That was 2,000 years ago, but the social norm of Jesus' day (where "family-members care for other family-members") continues to be the "safety net" for billions of people on this planet to this very day!

    The "extended family" pattern is typical of the Samoan Church -- three generations living in one family house is the norm. Middle-aged parents have their elderly folks, plus their married daughter’s family (with grandkids), under one roof! It’s their Samoan culture, yes, but it also saves the family a lot of money, and it helps to maintain family cohesion and the family’s values. Similar living arrangements (with Oma/Grandma in her part of the house, and the adult children raising their own kids in an upstairs apartment) are still common among our farming friends’ families in Germany. The dairy farm where Patty & I stay when we visit Germany have two generations in the same house, eating meals together and working in the barn together.

    Generally, in developed nations like ours, the fabric of "family ties" have come unraveled. Here at Los Altos UCC, Sumer & Genaro & little Nicholas live in the Lesser family home, but generally, we can’t imagine moving into the same house as our in-laws, or moving in to live with Grandma – unless it is a financial “last resort!”

    Other priorities come ahead of commitment to one's family of origin in America, and (it seems) other values sometimes even come ahead of one's commitment to one's spouse or to one’s own children!

    So, the first thing we must admit is that we do not value Mothers and Sons in quite the way that Jesus demonstrates in this story from the Cross. It is rare for us to “re-define” who our parents and siblings are. We buy into the myth of the “nuclear” family -- a Mom and a Dad and 1.5 children -- the ideal of owning a “single-family” house, the goal of individual success, all of which keeps us largely isolated from the rest of one’s extended family -- except on holidays, or at weddings and funerals.

    Take my own family for example…
My Mother lives in Alpena, Michigan. My sister and older brother both live in Kalamazoo, which is over 400 miles away. Then the other three boys: one is in Concord, Massachusetts, one in Bavaria, Germany, and me way out here in California! We’re scattered… each of us pursuing our own preferences, with little thought about family loyalty, responsibility, or cohesion. It’s not that we don’t “get along”… we just don’t think about it much. My brothers and I don’t seem to value the Mother/Son relationship as much as Jesus apparently did, if this quote from the Cross means anything at all to us.

    Secondly, when adult children do come back home, often with their family in tow, it’s because they’ve become “too poor” to be able to make it “on their own.” That’s the tragic reality I want us to think about on this Mother’s Day 2011.

    In the half-hour since this worship service began -- if the average daily statistics from across the U. S. hold true today -- already a dozen teen-age girls have given birth. Certainly not in the families right here in Los Altos UCC -- not among the young people who meet here as a youth group (God forbid!) -- but in the larger society within which we live, we have babies raising babies!

    Teen-age mothers may feel a deep love for their little “bundle of joy”, but how broad of a “family”-support will those young mothers be able to provide?

    Some of these pregnant teenagers are blessed with extended families (who welcome the new baby into their midst) or they have "Tender Loving Grandparents" who don’t mind an extra mouth to feed. A few of those pregnant girls may marry the father of their child, and a few of those marriages may even last. But you know as well as I that the statistics for teen-age mothers are not promising. The fabric of those families is already frayed at the get-go... and the social welfare “safety net” has become thread-bare here in California!

    In the same past half-an-hour that those 12 babies were born to teen-age mothers, nearly two dozen girls got abortions. Beyond the statistics of pregnancies, there’s no way to calculate how many American kids are putting themselves at risk of AIDS (or other STD’s) due to their sexual acting-out. According to a survey from the Center for Disease Control: 43% of youth ages 14-17 are sexually active.   That’s less than half of America’s Middle School & High School kids... but it’s an awfully high number! (Again, I don’t think our Los Altos UCC kids are into this behavior…but I don’t ask, & the kids don’t tell.)

    Because it’s Mother’s Day, I have to ask: are these young mothers ready to start a family? You see, by God’s design, that’s what sex is ultimately for: creation of new life, bringing into being the next generation. The “sex-act” followed by “child-birth” is the cement that bonds a family from one generation to the next!

    Like every baby, Jesus had been carried in Mary’s womb for nine months. Do the math: counting back 9 months puts Jesus’ conception sometime in mid-April, for him to be born in December. During those nine months, Mother Mary felt Jesus’ heart-beat along with her own, felt him kick under her ribcage. So, is it any wonder that she should also now feel the pain of his agony, as he is dying on the Cross!?

    According to the Christmas tradition, Mary had been an unwed teen-age mother herself, and yet she hung in there with her boy through it all. So, it can be done. But, it ain’t easy.

    Do you suppose these sexually active teenagers of our day are ready to make the kinds of commitments that will sustain healthy, loving relationships? Because that, too, is God’s design in the intimacy of sexuality. Engaging in sex is supposed to be more than “giving in” to a boyfriend’s advances “to show how much you love him;” more than a night of fun with your friends. It’s more than the heady rush of hormones, or the release of tension. To have sex is to indicate to your partner that you are ready for the emotions & decisions that relate to pregnancy and parenting.

Or is that love & sex pure romance, and not real!? Judging from some of the more popular (but raunchy) music videos and teen-movies, it seems to me that sex without responsibility & without consequences is the “ideal” – & for too many young people, it’s taken to be the norm.

    The statistics for minors between 18 - 21 (which is a bit older group: late high school and early college age) -- when hormones are high and house rules have become lax -- show that 82% are sexually active... that's eight out of ten! ...and half of them have had four or more partners.

    Now, I don’t suppose many of you thought you’d hear these things about sex from the pulpit on Mother’s Day, especially when the Bible text was about the Crucifixion.

But I was struck by the seriousness of the commitment that Mary took on as Jesus’ Mother, and by the reciprocal care that her son took of his Mother in providing an alternative care-giver from among his disciples.

    Love & sex are not romantic emotions in the Bible, they are precursors to life-creation and life-commitments. If the things I’ve been talking about in today's sermon -- from women-in-poverty to teen-age pregnancy, from death of a child to caring-for-our elderly parents -- has not touched your family directly, count yourself lucky! For you, these numbers can remain merely “statistics” affecting someone else, not you. You may remember this Mother’s Day sermon 2011 as something “a little odd” that Pastor Lance did, but no big deal.

    But if you are (and I know that many of you are!) among the tens of millions of families who have run head-on into these realities in your own homes... you will find it hard to ever forget this sermon this day! I want us to be a church where even those burdens -- secret, gut-wrenching, painful realities -- can be faced and embraced. Because we know that God cares! So should we.

    Each of those statistics represents a family in crisis -- and the ripple-effect (among our relatives, our friends, our church, and ourselves!) has gotten the whole of American society "all churned up!"

    The fabric of "family" as a safety-net (based on blood-ties and marriage vows) is no longer all that reliable in America. Instead, for far too many women and children, the fabric of marriage has been woven into a straight-jacket, imprisoning them by economic fear and all too often domestic abuse. For millions of others, family ties that should have been strong have broken like so much "spider silk." The marriage vows were just not taken seriously; or life got in the way of their plans. Things got too hard, or became too routine... Divorce is often seen as a “solution” instead of a social problem.

    It was not only Jesus who was having a bad day on that Good Friday, his Mother was losing her son, before her very eyes! And there was nothing she could do to stop it. The disciples were losing their central figure, the One who had loved them and had led them.

    Jesus, did what he could, saying to his mother: 'Woman, here is your son.' and to the disciple whom he loved, 'Here is your mother.' And from that time on, this disciple took Mary into his home.

    Perhaps, instead of relying so much on “blood ties” to define who our “family” is -- and instead of just the legal & cultural definitions we take on through our vows of marriage, adoption hearings, and legal custody -- we should follow Jesus' lead as we see him in this story:

    Think of those people whom you love. People you have spent time with... People you have spent yourself upon. People who have stood by you, especially when you were suffering on whatever the cross is that you have to bear.

    And then, knowing their hearts (as Jesus knew his disciples), offer them to one another as a new family... as your "true family."

    It's never too late to re-define your family, if this is something that needs correcting. All things can be made brand new. Re-define what it means to "mother" someone. Re-define it for yourself. Not everyone will understand "mothering" the way you do, but that's OK. Ask yourself: Who mothers you? Whom do you mother?

    While you’re at it, re-define what it is to have the responsibilities of a "son" (or daughter). And then choose those people among your circle of family and friends, who will understand the kind of commitment you mean, when you (like Jesus) say: "Woman, this is... your son!" This beloved friend of mine can be, for you, just like your own son or daughter. C’mon, Mom, give it a try! Lean on him like you leaned on me. He’ll be there for you, when I can’t be there.

    And then say to your friend: "Behold, your Mom (Dad)…"
Be a part of our family, the way families were meant to be.

    The dysfunctions of our families of origin (though they be many) and the scandalous misuse of sex, of marriage partners, and of children in so many American homes, need not be scars for life. It's never too late for us to re-define what a family is -- even to our dying day. This act of "caring re-definition" by Jesus was followed in John’s Gospel by only two more sentences: "I thirst" and "It is finished" Then he died!

    That’s how important family ties were to Jesus Christ. His care for his Mother -- and his concern for his beloved disciples -- were the last thing on his mind. They can be for us, too.

Give your Mom a hug.

                                        Amen.

Hope Reborn (a sermon based on Luke 24:13-35)

2011-05-01T11:51:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

May 1, 2011

In the immediate aftermath of the Crucifixion, Jesus’ followers were not only in grief (as we talked about last Sunday), they had to wrestle with some very tough questions: how could Jesus -- who taught a gospel of radical inclusion, forgiveness, and unconditional love -- have come to such a brutal end?

How could Jesus have suffered such a brutal and disgraceful death and still be what their experience persuaded them he was: God’s perfect example of wisdom, compassion, and spiritual power? How could such a good man -- who had such a strong following among the everyday ordinary people of Judea and Galilee -- have been taken so suddenly -- so violently! -- and executed by the Roman authorities, with the complicity of his own followers and the blessing of the religious authorities!?

Jesus’ disciples wavered in their faith when circumstances turned against them: when Jesus was betrayed, arrested, and crucified. We talked about that last week, when finding the tomb empty left everyone bewildered. The disciples had to understand (for themselves) -- and had to find a way to explain (to others) -- how what they believed about Jesus and his movement was really true – how their faith could continue and the Gospel movement persist – in spite of what had happened to their founder.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I think I understand where they are coming from. I appreciate their confusion. Nothing like this had ever happened before! No one in history had ever raised themselves from death!

Oh, yes, Lazarus (Jesus’ friend) had been raised from the dead. But he had the assistance of Jesus coming to his grave site and calling him forth, and, furthermore, Lazarus had only recently been buried. It was the revival of his friend Lazarus that helped draw such a large crowd on Palm Sunday.

But he wasn’t the only one. There is a far less well-known story of a young man in the town of Nain (an only son, upon whom his widowed mother relied for her future security!) whom Jesus brought back to life.   The son was being carried from his funeral to the burial pit when Jesus passed by, was moved with compassion, and raised the young man to new life. Jesus, on that occasion, was alive. He was in his prime!

And perhaps you remember the story of Talitha, the 12-year old daughter of Jairus, the synagogue ruler, who was lying on her bed in her own house, when Jesus came to her and said: “Little girl, arise.” The mourners laughed at Jesus for not believing that the girl was dead, and they were suddenly speechless when Talitha, in fact, woke up! In all three of those instances, Jesus was perfectly alive; fully in charge.

What the women (who had come to the tomb on Easter morning, and who had found it empty) reported implied that Jesus was able to call himself forth from death into life, while he was dead! That sounded like nonsense! No one had ever done that!

Oh yes, there was that moment in the Old Testament, when the dead prophet Samuel was conjured back by King Saul as a ghost from the netherworld to give him advice, but Samuel did not reappear as a living being. He was a spirit come back from the dead: a ghost! Furthermore, for that unwarranted excursion into the occult (the king communicating with the dead), Saul was cursed and lost his kingdom. Saul’s misfortune was good fortune for David, who became Israel’s next king when Saul so badly failed.

And outside the Bible, there are stories of people coming back from the underworld. For example, some of you may know that Greek mythology told of Orpheus coming back from the clutches of Hades because Zeus and the other Olympian Gods missed his beautiful singing voice. They asked Aesclepius, the physician, to do his healing magic and bring Orpheus back to life… which he did! But Jewish scholars (and most Christian schoolars, for that matter) dismiss the Greek gods as irrelevant fictions, not actual entities; the Titans and Olympians are not representative of the true and living God of the Bible! Furthermore, Orpheus did not bring himself back from the dead, he relied on the physician to do so. Jesus, of all characters in world literature, is the only one who was able to enter the domain of death, and exit again on his own time line, by his own will & volition. Jesus simply unlocked the gates of death and strolled back out.

An individual “resurrection” (such as Jesus accomplished) – one that did not await the final day of judgment when all flesh would be raised together – had never been imagined by the people in Jesus’ day. They had no idea how to interpret the news.

I sympathize with the sorrow these two disciples felt, and I certainly recognize their disillusionment.   In verse 21, they say to Jesus: “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” To my mind, those are among the saddest words in the Bible: “We had hoped.” Past tense. We had hoped… but no longer.

They had expected that Jesus would usher in the Messiah’s Kingdom, not that he would be killed by the empire. The unexpected set-back was overwhelming!

Their dreams of power and glory (“blessing, honor, glory, and power”) -- which were palpable on “Palm Sunday” -- were undone when Jesus submitted to arrest and execution without protest. To them, this nixed the possibility that Jesus represented God, for his very public failure -- his death! -- brought their dreams of a new kingdom to a hopeless end. Now that three days had passed, any hope of restoration was dead!

What they needed was their HOPE reborn! A second chance… a fresh start. Following the crucifixion, Jesus’ disciples were too confused to think straight; too sad to see straight. They didn’t even recognize Jesus, for goodness sake! Standing right there!

It seems their bewilderment and confusion was only exacerbated by the report of the women. The women suggest not only that Jesus is not dead, but that he’s going ahead of them to Galilee to continue their ministry as though it were a new beginning!

This morning we met two of them heading for Emmaus, a little town of no account, which was probably their hometown. They had split up from the other disciples; going home to grieve their losses. One was named Cleopas.

In the Gospel of John (19:25), we learn that Cleopas was the husband of one of the Mary’s who followed Jesus. The Gospels of Luke (24:10) and Matthew (27:56) suggest that this Mary was the mother of James (James the Less, or James the Just, to distinguish him from the son of Zebedee, John’s brother also anmed James). If Matthew, Luke, and John are all correct, Cleopas must have been the disciple James’ father. The very fact that two disciples were traveling together, one of them named and the other unnamed, suggests that Cleopas was the man & the other was his wife (Mary).

Be that as it may, these two are going home… without hope. They resign themselves to live out their lives as others seem to do – days of no account in a town of no account – and that on Easter Sunday, of all days! It’s been said that a person is not old until regrets take the place of their dreams. Those somber words “We had hoped…” could signify the death-knell of the Jesus movement! For Jesus’ community to go on after his death, HOPE must be reborn in these grieving disciples!

Do you realize what a great thing it is to have HOPES? Dreams of the future… Goals… a vision to pursue? According to the prophet Joel (Chapter 2, verse 28) the great sign of Messiah – of the Christ – coming into the world is an escalation of hope:

“It will come to pass (says God) that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh:
your sons and daughters shall speak of the future; your old folks will dream
dreams, and your young people shall see visions!”

Speaking of the future in hope-filled terms, dreaming dreams and encouraging visions… This is the palpable dynamic when God’s Will is being done on earth! Hopeful visions, dreams, a good and godly goal to pursue, measurable objectives that point us toward the ever-greater flourishing of life. Hope is the dynamo that charges the future with good things! It gets us up in the morning and out on the job. Hope for the future… hope for the better… hope achievable by the grace of God.

It seems to me that today everything is bad news: cut-backs and bail-outs, closures of companies and foreclosures on houses, higher taxes, lower expectations… It’s as though our whole society & economy is sighing: “We had hoped…”

“We had hoped…” but things happen: Death strikes. Reality crashes down on our hopes for the future. Young men and women just starting out, full of energy and vision, full of hopes for success and dreams of the future… can’t find a job. Their parents are struck with a “mid-life” crisis. Others around us are struck by tumors and unforseen disease. Struck by cars, or by gun-men, or rape. Struck by on-going war (first Afghanistan, then Iraq, now Libya), tornadoes all across the heartland of America with two hundred deaths, eathquakes and tsunamis that devastate whole regions, or some other heart-break. Something happens that makes us say: “Is this all there is?”

Dashed by fate or by failure, we cry out: “How can we continue to have HOPE in the face of all this!?” Environmental destruction, financial melt-down, drug cartels coming up from Mexico, drunk-drivers and drive-by shooters here in LA… There is so much bad news nowadays, I think we might be scaring ourselves to death! Just when we need to (more than ever) ACT on our problems, we are inclined to throw up our hands! You see, when hope dies, whether you’re young or old, the future dies with it.

We need Jesus to take the initiative again in our day, and come alongside us in the guise of a stranger, and not leave us on our own moving alone along our dead-end road. Remember, Jesus said: “I am the Way…” He did not say “at the end of the way, you will find me.” No, I AM the way. I am the road under your feet; the road that begins just as low as you happen to be. Jesus meets us right where we are, even in grief.

Returning to the story: Cleopas and his partner (wife) could not bring themselves to dismiss as “idle tales” the report of Mary Magdalene and the other women – and I suppose it would be especially so if one of those two disciples was the other Mary, trying now to get her husband (Cleopas) to believe what she and the others had experienced! Still, there was no proof of bodily resuscitation, only an empty tomb.

The very testimony of the women that Jesus had been raised from the dead, was suspect in the mind of the traditional Jewish men-folk.
Cleopas refers to other disciples, namely Peter and John, who also went to the tomb… but they only confirmed that the burial place was empty! They did not say they believed Jesus had risen from the dead.

It seems that only a verifiable re-appearance of Jesus Christ himself, after his death & burial, would have been convincing for those bewildered disciples. (And I suspect that’s still true for so many followers of Jesus in our day! Their doubts rule.)

In the story, Jesus (as always) takes the initiative. He doesn’t simply ascend to heaven upon his death (as is assumed of the rest of us); no, he returns and walks with them “through the valley of the shadow of death” as they are headed home. Jesus isn’t repelled by their hopeless-ness or by their helpless-ness; nor by the fact that they have apparently abandonded the other disciples, back in Jerusalem. Jesus isn’t put off by their confusion or their doubt. He comes to them. He comes alongside. He asks questions.

Jesus took the occasion to teach some principles from Old Testament prophecy, suggesting that the events of the recent week – the suffering of the Messiah – should not have come as a surprise. After all, none of the prophets were ever well-received! Their words were rejected by their people, and they suffered every kind of humiliation and set-back! It should have been anticipated that the Messiah would have to suffer in the effort to turn the world of oppressive power, sin and wrong-doing, around to God’s way.

So, beginning with the life of Moses (from the stories of Genesis and Exodus, the wandering in the wilderness and the conquest of Israel, through the kings and the Babylonian exile, to the last of Zechariah’s and Malachi’s hope for the future), Jesus outlined the path of the Messiah’s hoped for restoration of the Jewish people to become the Kingdom of God. It’s unfortunate that Luke did not record for us that whole exposition of Scripture, because it would be fascinating to see how Jesus used the Bible, but all we know is that the hearts of his hearers “burned within them” as he opened for them the Scriptures.

I hope people will say that about my sermons and Bible studies, but I’m not Jesus.

The first thing that strikes me as odd is that these two disciples did not recognize Jesus, even after being with him for a year or more. However, in several other instances, the Risen Christ was not readily recognized. Last Sunday (for example) we heard how Mary Magdalene, a person who knew Jesus more intimately than most, thought that the Risen Christ was the Gardener! She suggests that maybe he had taken the body away?   To a degree, this was the same Jesus they had known in life; but to a larger degree, Jesus was just another somebody, whose identity was only gradually revealed (after a time) in the stranger they had assumed him to be.

In my song this morning, the refrain was “We didn’t know it was you” -- “We didn’t know who you were.” I think of Joan Osborne’s popular song from a few years ago: “What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home… back up to heaven all alone…” Jesus was not recognized by Mary Magdalene on Easter morning in the Garden. He wasn’t recognized by these two along the Road to Emmaus.

That makes sense to me, now, however, when you remember his parable of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:44-45):
“Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked,
or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then he will answer them:
“Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not
do it to me.”    Jesus comes to us in the stranger, the person in need, our neighbor.

Also, did you notice how they assumed that Jesus did not know what had just happened! The events surrounding the death of Jesus was so well known (in their minds), that these two disciples could not understand how even a casual visitor to the Passover in the Temple could have missed it! Has he had his head in the sand?

I am similarly surprised when people who are reading the same newspapers as I, seem to miss what I think are the significant stories (in politics or economics), but they know the latest sports scores, movies and celebrity sightings. (They know what Kate wore on Friday at her wedding in London.)

Cleopas and his wife probably looked at Jesus as one of the ignorant masses, uninformed of the significance of Christ. They shake their heads and try to explain what has been central to their lives up to now. They thought the were so well informed, but they didn’t even know who they were talking to! Here they are, sharing their deepest concerns with a perfect stranger!

But I’ve begun to respect them for it. You see, I wonder: if Jesus met us along the everyday, ordinary way we live, would we initiate a discussion with him about matters central to us? Or would we suffice with small talk: the weather, the seasons, the President’s long-form birth certificate… the sports scene, Charlie Sheen’s latest antics? No, I’m impressed that Cleopas and his companion address the deeper issues they are wrestling with with this stranger. How different the story would have been if they had not mentioned Jesus to Jesus that day!

Third, I noticed that they called Jesus “a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.” This is how they evaluated Jesus’ ministry: he was a prophet.

Frankly, I think the Church has down-played the “prophetic” challenge that Jesus brought into the world; his social justice critique, his political activism. For some of us, political critique and social activism feels uncomfortable. We prefer to keep a lower profile among friends. We choose to forget that Jesus died for his prophetic critique of the powers that ruled his society and religion. He took it deathly seriously…

When these two disciples reached the end of their journey -- their house in Emmaus -- they extended the common courtesy to a stranger who, apparently, still had a longer journey ahead of them. They invited Jesus to spend the night with them.

Because of the dangers of the road, the lack of inns and shelters along the way, and the absence of streetlights in olden days, people did not usually travel by night. Their hospitality was rewarded when Jesus, who had been invited as a guest, assumed the role of the host, & blessed & broke the bread. Perhaps something in the gestures, or the words he used as he broke the bread, reminded them of the Last Supper – when Jesus had said: “Do this in remembrance of me.” And they remembered! They realized that Jesus was still with them. The movement wasn’t over, it wasn’t dead, unless they let it down… unless they killed it!

At that moment, hope was rekindled from the ashes; hope that was dead was reborn! Revived. Resurrected.

The discovery was so great that they could not wait until dawn. They returned in the dark, in the night, to Jerusalem! They found the other disciples and informed them of their experience. The dispersal of the disciples, which had begun after the crucifixion, was stopped in its tracks. They came back together to share their diverse experiences of the continuing presence of Jesus in their midst. Different people in different places and in different ways, encountered the continuing presence of Christ along their daily paths.

That’s what we’re doing here today. We come together from our scattered places of life to share with each other the experience of living with Jesus in our everyday lives. Jesus continues to ‘open our minds to understand the scriptures.’

The disciples came to believe that, despite his ignominious death, Jesus was the agent of God’s purpose, as they had once believed. The one in whom their hopes had been placed, is the right one, after all!   And Jesus did keep meeting them ‘in the breaking of the bread.’ As Christians continued to gather for the open/inclusive communal meals to which Jesus had introduced them, they experienced him as once again present. Continuing to empower them for the work of the Kingdom -- restoring their hope and strengthening their ministry -- he was the Living Lord, Jesus.
            Halleujah! … and Amen!

They Knew What They Were Doing! (an Easter sunrise sermon based on John 20:1-23)

2011-04-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

April 24, 2011

    In our Call to Worship this morning, we said that “for Easter to have its full meaning, we begin by remembering the suffering of Jesus and the losses that we ourselves have felt.” In the communion service, we recalled Jesus’ words about his body BROKEN and his blood SHED on that night of betrayal and desertion. We sang: “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”

    It’s not easy for "Easter people" like us -- Christian believers who trust that God has the power to bring about New Beginnings from the ashes of utter disaster -- to go back and imagine the feelings of disbelief, abandonment, mis-under-standings, and fears of those first disciples on that first Easter morning.

    It may be hard for us to get "inside" their heads, so long ago and so far away, unless we have had a similar personal confrontation with the pain of tragic loss (the unfairness and injustice) represented by the death of Jesus. Nonetheless, I really believe that Easter is emptied of its glorious Good News if it does not begin with a direct experience of the tragic Bad News of death and despair… the chaos and brokenness of good people who have been victimized by violence and evil.

In the stories we heard this morning, we met people who were blinded by grief. Some of them were in denial. Some, probably, were still at the stage we call "bargaining" -- wanting to make a deal with God so that things could go back to the way they were before the violence, before the death of their loved one. Some, most certainly, were angry at the tragic turn of events. All of them were hurting.

    When we think of Mary Magdalene, weeping outside the tomb, alone, remember: she is grieving deeply.

    When we think of the two disciples who ran to the tomb after Mary told them what had happened -- wanting to believe but caught in denial -- remember: they, too, are men deeply grieving.

    When we think of Thomas, later, who refused to believe that Christ had risen unless he had the physical evidence of touching Jesus' resurrected body himself -- wanting to believe, but stymied by lack of proof – perhaps he was hurt & angry that the others had seen Jesus a whole week earlier, but he was left out… perhaps Thomas was especially worried that the occasion in the Upper Room (that we just read about) on that first Easter Sunday might have been the only time the Risen Christ would ever appear (and he missed it!) -- Oy veh! -- remember: he is in grief.

The events of Easter recorded in the Gospels give us a picture of a brokenhearted, confused, betrayed community. Not only had these disciples let Jesus down -- when they fled from the Garden and when they denied knowing him -- Jesus had let them down! How could he just let himself be arrested (condemned, crucified!) without resisting his fate -- without calling down angels to his aid!? The remnant disciples felt betrayed by the God they served, and by Judas, and by the Temple authorities. They were angry, and feeling lost without Jesus in their midst. No wonder they locked the doors!

    Deep inside, deep down inside, they knew that their friend (their partner, their Lord) had died on them.   Isn't it enough to bring tears to your eyes? The one in whom their lives had found its deepest meaning... who had vowed never to leave them... who had said that he loved them... who had come so that their joy might be full and their lives "abundant"... The one who had led them, and laid down his life for them... had up and died on them!

    These women and men we read about this morning were disciples of Jesus. They all knew Jesus -- first hand, better than you or I will ever know him. But in their grief, faith came hard. How much harder then for those of us who have never seen him, who must trust the stories.

    I believe they had faith – but it was in turmoil at the time. In their grief, faith alternated with fear. Fear of dying, of course, that's the big one. But there was also fear of how they would continue to live without Jesus, their leader, their loved one.

Confronting human mortality is a fearful thing! (We don’t do it very often, and we don’t do it gladly.) The death of a loved one is a tremendous burden. And it is not unusual for the grieving person to feel like we’re the first one to have ever felt this crashing, crushing, hellish emptiness. We take death so personally!

Death is a burden – a burden that has been felt by all the generations which have preceded us, and it has been felt among the loved ones of this congregation.

In the short one year that I’ve been with you as your Pastor, Kenny Sams lost his step-father Lowell Johnson, Kathe Lampert lost her mother Patti Rea, Mary Clysdale bid farewell to her beloved husband Jack; we celebrated the lives of members Shirley Ecklund and Leon Smith, and just this week: 29-year-old Jeremy Kersey. If you want to see the face of fresh grief, talk to Jeremy’s father Billy Kersey -- “a parent is not supposed to outlive their children!” -- or, better yet, talk to Jeremy’s 9-year-old son Nathan who misses his Dad terribly… and is a bit angry at God.

    Yes, faith overcomes grief... yes, it does… but not all at once. For a time, faith alternates with denial, and anger, and fear. That's perfectly normal.

    Mary and the men had faith -- not just in Jesus -- they also had faith in their faith traditions as righteous, God-fearing, Bible-believing Jews. They had faith – yes! -- but it alternated with fear... in this case, fear of their own religious leaders!

    The very institution to which they would have turned for solace and comfort in their grief, had been party to their pain! The Temple priests, the palace guards, the governor Pilate, the ruling Pharisees on the Sanhedrin court, all had blood on their hands! And I suspect the disciples also feared the crowds -- their own basic followers and friends, who just last week had sung "Hosanna! Hallelujah!" in the Palm Sunday Parade -- but who had changed their tune by Friday morning to "give us Barabbas!" and "Crucify him!"

    The women and men who were Jesus’ closest friends were blinded by grief, because they had a loved one who died. And they are also angry. Angry because it was an unnecessary death, an unjust death, a betrayal of innocent blood, a life cut off too soon. Their grieving feeds their anger, their faith alternates with fear, their hope is swamped by hurt. They seek certainty, solid ground, but they find (in the empty tomb) only the reminder that the future is open -- the future is always open! -- which adds, perhaps for some people, the fear of the unknown! The mystery of death is compounded when they find the tomb empty. They don't know what to think! And that's normal.

    The glorious Good News of Easter -- in all its joyful promise, its profound truth, and its majestic meaning echoing through the ages -- does not dispel the fact of Jesus' untimely and unjust death (nor the fact that every one of us will die). The Easter story reminds us that death is a part of human life... as is birth! In fact, everyone who is born will one day die! (I hope this is not the first time someone mentioned that fact to you. I’d hate to dispel your hope of living forever… on Easter Sunday of all days!) But, c’mon, we’ve got to face the facts. Death happens!

    Somewhere in the stretch of time between Jesus’ Crucifixion on Friday, his quick burial, and the dawn of Easter Sunday, the sadness of death and the dark shadow of the Cross gave way to the “Alleluias” of Easter (even as we have sung them this morning!). The incredible horror of Friday’s deadly Cross became the unbelievable hope of Sunday’s empty Tomb.

    The “how,” the “when,” and the exactly “what” of that “Easter miracle” is shrouded in mystery -- hidden (as it was) from view. All we can do is speculate about how it came about. Only God knows! But the spectacular result -- the changed lives of so many people, both in Jesus’ day and in the 2,000 years that have followed -- shines brightly and clearly for all the world to see. There’s your proof that Easter happened: all those millions upon millions of changed lives over the past 20 Centuries! Including some of us here this morning!

The Easter miracle reassures us that the God who loved us into being -- and whose living Spirit breathes in our bodies of dust -- also embraces us beyond the grave. That's what resurrection means!

    The Good News of Easter does not dispel the fact of Jesus' death, but it gives death new meaning. It assures us, as no other event in human history has been able to do, that God's love will not leave us, Jesus will embrace us, Christ will come to us, even beyond the grave (if needs be).     Can I hear a "hallelujah!"?(!)
Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Jesus is still alive! His way was vindicated by rising from the dead. It may be unbelievable… but that’s the Christian Gospel. Jesus Christ is still alive! His way was proved true when he arose on Easter.

Jesus, in his very public DYING -- hung out there on a Roman Cross for all the world to see! -- helps us face the fact of death… (his back then and ours coming now) and Jesus’ RISING helps us to overcome our fear of dying. But that’s not all!

    Jesus further overcame the desire for revenge -- that self-serving, self-defensive, knee-jerk response many of us have to unfair, unjust, injurious action -- “pay ’em back!”   Do to them what they’ve done to us. See how they like it when the shoe is on the other foot!

    Jesus overcame the attitude of revenge (which so inflames many people) as he extended “forgiveness” to all as he died on the Cross. You may recall the story of Jesus saying to the criminal on a neighboring cross: “Today you will be with me in paradise” and how Jesus said: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” to the very people who were executing him! (?) (Luke 23: 34 & 43) Would any of us have been able to do that?
I think people tend to resist “forgiveness” as a rule -- we begrudgingly give it, because we are told “it’s the right thing to do.” But, oh, sweet revenge is so much easier to embrace.

     Jesus had every reason to hold people accountable, to judge them harshly, to desire their punishment.   But he didn’t!    In the same way that “fear of dying” is un-Christian, there is no place in Christian faith to desire revenge, to demand “pay-back” (or someone’s “just deserves”), not if we take Jesus Christ as our role model! He overcame that! We should, too.

    If anyone had the right (and authority) to judge people and to make them pay, it was Jesus! His innocent blood, his sinless life, his martyrdom cries out for justice! And yet, Jesus said: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” Incredible! So far as I can tell, everyone involved in the Crucifixion knew very well what they were doing!

    Consider the disciples, for example. After having been told (during the com-munion meal) that one of them was a “betrayer”; having warned Peter, their leader, that he would deny that he was a follower of Jesus (not once, but three times!); having asked them to keep watch in the Garden of Gethsemane, to stay with him and pray with him -- after all that, the disciples still did their own thing anyway!

    They didn’t pray, they slept. They didn’t keep watch, they let the mob come with clubs and swords to arrest him. They didn’t stay with him, they fled. And all the while, they knew what they were doing!

    Peter felt so bad about it later, we are told, that he went out and wept bitterly… because he knew what he had done. Judas, we are told, became so un-consolable that he hung himself… because he, too, knew what he had done.

    Or consider the Sanhedrin -- the assembly of Temple priests, Annas, Caiaphas and the rest. They knew what they were doing, as they called a secret mid-night trial; as they paid blood money to the informer, as they bribed witnesses to bear false testimony. They knew what they were doing!

Consider Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor… When pressed for a verdict of the death penalty, he says: “Why? What evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged, and then release him.” (Luke 23:22) He knew what he was doing, as he changed his mind and handed Jesus over to the executioners.

And while the soldiers whipped Jesus to within an inch of his life, they knew what they were doing! (No one is innocent!)

    When Pilate sent an innocent man down “death row” -- the crowd, the very same folks who had cheered Jesus with palm branches and a parade just last Sunday, now jeer at him as he carries a bloody Cross down the Via do la Rosa to the place of the Skull (Golgotha) to die… They knew what they were doing! Every one of them -- as they bribed & betrayed & brutalized, as they fled in fear or washed their hands of any accountability -- they knew exactly what they were doing! And yet Jesus says: “Forgive them, for they know NOT what they do.” It’s remarkable, almost unbelievable.

    As we see Jesus overcome his fear of death, and overcome his personal pain and desire for revenge, as he prayed for those sinners who were killing him… we realize he is praying for all of us, who know not what we do.

    We come from all that “tragedy” to this morning -- to the Easter sunrise encounter at the empty tomb. It is perhaps the most stubborn opposition Jesus will have to overcome: namely, the grief and fear which has so blinded and immobilized his disciples, such that (if they can’t get past it) his whole life & death may have been for naught.

    Frankly, that work -- even after so many centuries -- is still only beginning. To this day, it is not just our fear of death, and our resistance to forgiveness, and our desire for revenge, that sucks the spirit of Jesus out of our churches… too many Christians are stuck in grief and immobilized by our fears.

    The disciples were seeking certainty, solid ground, but they found (in the empty tomb) only the reminder that the future is open … the future is always open... the future is always unknown! For some people, fear of the unknown adds to their sense of loss. They don't know what to think! They feel like they are on an emotional rollercoaster! And that's normal.

To grieve, upon the death of a loved one, is natural. It's the way we are made. (It's automatic.) And because it is universal and because it is natural, I believe grieving is given to us by God; perhaps to demonstrate the depths of meaning that our lives have on one another. We don’t just cast a person aside like an empty soft-drink container when they die. We grieve. We mourn. We remember.

    I believe the Christian gospel offers every grieving widow, every heart-broken youngster, a permanent "happy ending" to the story of a person's life. Easter brings us to a place where the pain of separation and the fear of dying is past, where the circle is unbroken, and every hurt is healed. But it does not remove the preceding tragedy and loss.

The Christian faith does not close its eyes to death -- we look beyond death to the time when the circle will be unbroken, and every tear is wiped away. We Christians believe what we see...but we also believe far more than we can see.

Easter confirms our belief that Death is NOT the final chapter. It is a chapter in life, yes, a very real one! But it is not the FINAL one. Death is less like a “period” that ends a sentence, and more like a “comma” – where our loved-one continues… set apart from this ordinary world, yet alive in the very real presence of the Resurrected One, and of all who have gone before us; as well as continuing in our hearts and memories. I said all that just one week ago Saturday at Leon Smith’s gravesite interment. I’ll say it again to the bereaved family of Jeremy Kersey this coming Wednesday at his graveside inurnment.

But, please, just because we're Christians, who believe in “life after death,” it doesn’t mean that we are able to “explain everything.” There's a lot of mystery in the events of Easter. There are a lot of unexplained experiences in these stories, as there is in almost every person’s death.

Even the Risen Christ (Jesus) doesn't seem to be able to "make it all better" --regardless how much he tries! He comes to Mary Magdalene, and she thinks he’s a grave-robbing gardener! He comes to the disciples, locked in the Upper Room, and they are frightened, thinking they are seeing a ghost! There’s no accounting for the conclusions people jump to, especially when they are afraid and in grief.

    So, in the end, it may be more "Christlike" just to be there -- as was Jesus -- appearing to Mary in her confusion, in her weeping, allowing himsef to be the target of her blaming and her accusations. I am impressed that Jesus accepted her grief. Simply saying her name lets Mary know that he was there for her. Grieving people sometimes just need us to go to them to let them know that we are with them, that we are there for them, and that we love them.     It may be the most Christlike to go to them where you are not expected. Even where (it seems, in their grief, that) you have been "locked out" (excluded) in the same way that Jesus had been locked out from the Upper Room! (John tells us: “The doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews!”) When people are in grief, they huddle in fear. Easter says: go to them anyway. Be with them.

    Jesus came back to be with Mary -- to comfort her and to convince her that life was stronger than death… that life outlived every expectation -- even burial could not hold him down! Jesus showed us that life which is made available to God in this world, is eternally available to God.

    Jesus came back for the disciples, to give them the Holy Spirit and the gift of Peace in their hearts. And Jesus came back eight days later specifically for Thomas. (We’ll talk about that two weeks from now.)

To be Easter people, we must be willing to enter a very vulnerable & chal-lenging world: the world of the frightened, the grieving, the angry, & the betrayed. We need to be able to draw alongside… as Jesus drew alongside the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (which is the story we will talk about next Sunday).

    If we discover that they are angry, that's OK; it's natural. Offer to them, as Jesus did, words of Peace. If they feel weak and shuddering, remind them that they have the Holy Spirit to strengthen them. If they feel all alone, get close to them -- come to them before they have to ask. That's what the Risen Christ did, over and over. Eat with them. Make youself available to them.

    To be an “Easter People” in our world (which suffers from grief and loss, injustice and anger) is sometimes scary. It makes us just as vulnerable as they are. Jesus had to show his hands, his side... He had to allow Thomas to point at his wounds, to poke at his scars! Jesus had to explain to the two disciples on the road what the prophets had said about the Messiah suffering. He had to go home with them, & break bread with them again, anew.   I am grateful that Jesus was willing to do whatever it took to reassure his disciples that he was still with them, forever!

    I say: thank God for Easter (for the promise of eternal life that it secures for us all) and I thank God also for you, Los Altos Church: for you are the resurrected, re-born “Body of Christ” in this place at this time. To be an “Easter People” (as Avery & Marsh call us in our Closing Song this morning) gives us courage both to face death and to give comfort to those who mourn.

We live in the aftermath not only of the Crucifixion, but of the Easter miracle… and that is a good place to be!

                                        Amen.

Jesus Knew Who He Was (a sermon based on Psalm 118, and Luke 19:33-48)

2011-04-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

April 17, 2011
Palm Sunday

Some 2,000 years have passed since Jesus’ “Great Passover Parade” took Jerusalem by storm, and we have grown accustomed to telling the story: the children singing “Hosanna”, waving palm branches; people putting their cloaks on the road for Jesus to ride his borrowed colt upon. And when the Pharisees complain: “Rabbi, order your disciples to stop!” we might wonder, why? What’s wrong with a happy, happy, hand-clappy parade?   After 2,000 years of familiarity, we Christians might be missing something of the “prophetic symbolism” being acted-out by the Jewish people. In fact, they were following the script of a priestly liturgy!

    Psalm 118 (which we read this morning) was the script that was used on the annual anniversary of a royal enthronement. It is something like our 4th of July holiday recalling America’s founding. Psalm 118 commemorates every victorious battle of the Jewish king, and more important, the establishment of Israel as an independent kingdom in David’s day.

I had us read it responsively this morning to get a sense of how the Jewish leaders would have done it, 3,000 years ago, and annually thereafter. The king, the priests, & the people, each had prescribed words and actions to perform. King David is given credit for writing the liturgical text Psalm 118, although it is more likely that King Solomon was the first to actually do it at his new Temple.

    During the 500 years of Monarchy in Jerusalem, this royal psalm was recited during the fall Festival of “Tabernacles,” when booths (or sukkoth) were built out of palm branches that had been brought up from Jericho. (Hence, the many palm branches people had with them. They were going to use them later.)

As the people approached the City from the East -- as they arrived from the Mount of Olives and headed toward the Eastern Gate… with the rising sun at their backs -- they would call out: “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his steadfast love endures forever!”

    The king would then recite a litany of sufferings (which Jonathan read this morning) telling of his humiliation at the hand of his enemies, and invoking the name of the Lord to help him. The people would then chime in: “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in mortals! It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to rely on princes!”

    The king then goes on, reciting the battles he won in Yahweh’s name, culminating in the refrain: “The Lord is my strength and my might, and has become my salvation.” He then cries out as he approaches the Golden Gate, on the East side of the Temple Mount: “Open for me the gates of righteousness; I shall enter through them! I shall give thanks to the Lord!” (Psalm 118:19) I took that line for myself this morning.

    But the priests stop the royal parade at this point with these words: “This is the gate that belongs to the Lord. Only the righteous shall enter through it.”

The king bows in humility and says: “I thank you that you have answered me, and have become my salvation.”

    The people in the procession say: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is a marvel in our eyes! This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it! Save us, we beseech you, O Lord.   Save us: Ho-sha-nah!   Lord, save us.”

    Having given honor to the Lord God, with the king bowed in humility and the people singing their “Hosannahs,” pleading for entry in the name of God, the priests are supposed to answer: “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of Yahweh.” (Psalm 118: 26)

    This was the script every year ever since the days of King David & Solomon! Everyone knew their parts. After the Exile in Babylon, when there was no longer a Jewish king in Jerusalem, the civic leaders (looking for the Messiah, looking for a “coming” ruler) would “re-enact” this script not only in the fall for sukkot, the Festival of Booths, but also in the spring Passover as well! In fact, by the time of Jesus, the Temple authorities insisted it be read also during Hannukah! In Jesus’ day, the king’s script was recited three times a year.

This liturgy is called the “hall-el” --the “Praise God” (or as we say it: “hallel-u-jah”: “Praise to the Lord!”). When Psalm 118 is connected to the Passover “liberation” theme, it inspires nationalism; patriotic shrugging off of foreign overlords!

    Now, you may wonder why I took so much sermon time to explain the historical background of the liturgy of Palm Sunday. Is it just to show off how much “trivia” I have tucked away in my little grey cells? How much irrelevant detail I can “spin” into the warp and woof of the Church’s only really great Parade Day? Do I need to fill in the 20 minutes allotted for a sermon this way?

No, it’s because I want you to know what Jesus and his followers were doing in social-justice “political” terms, so that we not go away yet one more year with merely a happy-clappy praise-chorus parade! Every Jew in Jesus’ day would have known that this parade was a royal enthronement -- a “coronation” march, one might say. And Jesus is placed at the center – Jesus is playing the part of the new king, the long-awaited Son of David. They are proclaiming him king!

    That would not be acceptable to the Romans. The Jews already had a king -- Herod! They didn’t need a new one, authorized by public acclaim of the people. Theirs was not a government of the people by the people and for the people. Judea was part of an empire, a military occupation, with a bureaucratic hierarchy imposed on the population. Jerusalem was not a “representative form” of democracy, any more than Moamar Quaddafi’s Libya or Hosni Mubarek’s Egypt! Jesus’ Israel was a monarchy, an oligarchy, an empire-elite hierarchy.

    And the Jesus movement – the Church in its raw newness, it’s radical origin – was the very opposite of royal hierarchy, elite oligarchy, priestly or political power. In the Jesus’ movement, everyone was to be included, regardless of social rank or gender, past history, or personal shortcoming. No hierarchy; no exclusion! No separating of saint from sinner, purity cult from common life. No! No ranking rulers lording over low-class servant-class people. No! Not in the Church; not in Jesus’ community, that is. You see, Jesus was there for the left-outs and left-overs, for tax-collectors and tax-payers, for sinful women & shame-ful men! He was there for all! The people of the street, the children, they knew!

    He was there in the midst of dirt and danger, in the midst of the unkosher and the unclean. He was there when people’s hope seemed out of reach, and always seemed to be there where he was needed… even when it was least expected. This one, this homeless vagabond, who had been born in a barn, raised in a small town, never had much money, never wrote a book or had a hit song…

    But here he is, on Palm Sunday, being crowned… a King!

    Now, knowing the background of the liturgy should help us see why the Pharisees wanted to call a halt to the parade.

Jesus was meddling in public affairs, taking a role in politics! Jesus knew what he was doing! With Jesus playing the part of the king, riding on the colt, bowed in humility -- and the people singing their “Hosannahs” as they are supposed to do -- pleading to be saved in the name of Yahweh (“Save us, Lord!” is what the word “Hosanna” means in Hebrew) the priests were supposed to answer: “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of Yahweh.”

    But they wouldn’t say their part! They kept quiet.

So, the crowd takes up the refrain that the priests were supposed to say: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” Well, that only angered the Pharisees that much more. Instead of words of welcome, they rebuke Jesus. “Tell your followers to be silent!” they say.

    It may have been acceptable to the priests & the ruling Pharisees to recite Psalm 118 as a liturgy (one worship text, one Bible-reading among many) in the neutrality of a worship setting. But it was “blasphemous” to re-enact it in its original context with its (obvious) “royal” meaning. Jesus was taking the liturgy out from the national sanctuary and into the streets! He was living it for real! Jesus knew what he was doing; he knew who he really was.

    You see, the priests had domesticated the words of the Psalm through their tradition, dulled its edge by frequent repetition, emptied it of actual meaning. They “said” it, but they didn’t “do” it! It had become just so many religious-sounding words after a time. Ja-da, jah-da, jad-da…

    Remember, the people said these “Palm Sunday” words in formal worship three times every year! (We only do it once a year.) They got the words right (ortho-doxia), but they voided the meaning (no, they avoided the meaning) those very words were trying to convey! (As, I suspect, we sometimes do with the Lord’s Prayer, or a familiar hymn or a favorite Bible passage. We say them so often they don’t really mean anything anymore! Communion becomes old hat.)

While the religious authorities (with their pride of royal heritage and their nationalism) encouraged people to say the words of the Palm Sunday liturgy in worship, they forbade any re-enactment! What Jesus was doing -- making royal entry into the city & into the Temple -- was not allowed until Messiah comes.

Who does Jesus think he is? The Messiah!? The awaited Anointed One?

    I believe that, on that Palm Sunday, Jesus and his followers claimed the power of prophetic symbolism and biblical tradition as they were originally intended -- as statements of God’s royal authority over matters of politics and national allegiance -- and they acted upon them as though it were coming true, as though it was really happening. Jesus and “his people” took the Bible seriously & did it!

    Opening the gates of the city, and crying out: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” was the formally prescribed way the Temple authorities would officially recognize and receive the one coming as their victorious king. Jesus and the street people did their part, but the clergy refused to do theirs! Perhaps it was out of fear of Roman reprisal (coronating a king that had not been vetted by the governor!), perhaps it was just plain stubbornness, but the fact is the religious leaders refused to accept Jesus as “the cornerstone” -- they rejected Jesus’ version of Kingdom… and they rebuked his followers. But Jesus knew who he was, and he knew what they were doing… and knew where it would lead.

    From my reading of the Bible, it seems that the Spirit of Jesus’ movement was contagious. The seeds of his Gospel had been widely broad-cast throughout the first three years of his ministry, and the new community of faith in God (a community of relentless hope and unconditional love) had taken root in lots of fertile soil! Today’s great parade was the culminating response by those whose lives had been changed by that humble man from Galilee. “Hosanna -- God saves! Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace on earth and glory in the highest heaven!”

Huh!...Those were the very same words the angels sang on Christmas Eve! “Peace on earth & glory to God in the highest!” Now it’s said again, at the start of Holy Week, the week when Jesus died. “Peace on earth & glory to God in the highest!” How I wish it had turned out that way…! That’s what God wanted. And as Jesus realized that it was not going to happen, he wept. He wept for the peace that was possible, but was being rejected. For the glory that God deserved, but was not going to receive from these priests and Pharisees and civic rulers.

    The welcome which was supposed to be expressed by the priests from the Temple steps, was being shouted (instead) from the lips of children, from fisher-men, from women, from common peasants come down from Galilee, from tax collectors and other sinners... from ordinary folks… like you and me!

And Jesus tells the Pharisees that if we disciples fail to recite the royal welcome, then the very stones (the Temple steps themselves, where the priests were supposed to be standing) would shout it out! Because it’s happening!

It’s as though Jesus responded: “Sorry, friends, there’s no stopping it now. The promised event (the Messiah’s coming, the new kingdom!) is happening now, and the indicated roles will be filled, even if God has to do it alone!”

    Palm Sunday announced to the world: the Messiah has arrived, and has been recognized as God’s true king, above Caesar, above Herod & the Temple hierarchy... but… he was not recognized (nor welcomed) by those with power; rather, by a mixed-bag crowd of real people whose lives had been changed for good.

Palm Sunday is the day the church went public, took to the streets, and made their stand. This is the day when Jesus drove out the merchants and the moneychangers from the Temple grounds! The whole thing, starting with the parade and ending in the Temple, was direct political action… which the people loved (they were “spellbound,” says Luke), but which, apparently, were also the very things that got Jesus killed! He was arrested on Maundy Thursday night, crucified on Friday, dead & buried on Holy Saturday. Holy week ended with tragedy.

For now, on this first day of Holy Week, on the day of the great green parade: let’s remember Jesus as the true king, who competed with the Temple authorities and with Caesar’s Empire… and won -- even though it looked (for a time) as though he had lost when those imperial powers hung him from the cross!

As tragic and painful as it is to see Jesus hanging blameless on a cross -- innocent blood, martyred by intolerant rulers -- remember that he knew who he was! He saw it through to the bitter end, and beyond, in order that we may have life. New life. Everlasting life. Jesus would rather die than leave us in the dark. With his last breath, he forgave all of us. His is the victory and he is the king, the one who is always with us. Jesus is the God who really understands, because he’s always been there with us, through it all, the thick and the thin! He can be the strength we need when we have none, because Jesus Christ connects us to the God of the whole universe.

And if we recognize, on this day, the “things that make for peace”… and, like Christ, do our utmost to realize (that is, to make real) God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, perhaps Jesus’ tears on that first Palm Sunday will not have been shed in vain… nor his precious blood, shed in vain.

God bless you, in this Holy Week, and forever. Amen.

Jesus: A Prophet like Moses... only Greater! (a sermon based on Deuteronomy 18:15-18 and Deuteronomy 34:7-12)

2011-04-10T11:42:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

April 10, 2011

    Jesus performed such glorious “signs” -- healings and other miraculous displays of power -- that the crowds in Jerusalem were in an uproar! Never before had they seen anyone like Jesus: a prophet with such authority, such charisma, such power; a conduit of the divine in every word he spoke, every deed he did... Jesus seemed to know Yahweh-God “on a first-name basis”... face-to-face! (He even called him “Abba!” -- "Daddy!")

    Never since the days of Moses was there such a one as Jesus! He spoke as one with authority: re-interpreting the Laws of Moses left & right. Jesus put emphasis on other parts of the story, and other parts of the Law & the prophets than the people were accustomed to hearing. … To the teachers of Torah (the Laws of Moses), it was upsetting! Jesus’ point of view “cut against the grain” of their priestly orthodoxy, the Pharisee’s long-standing traditions, and the scribes’ nationalistic ethnic culture.

    Take for example: “loving your neighbor as yourself.”     Moses wrote that... but Moses wrote a lot of unloving things, too. Why didn’t Jesus go along with the bulk of the Law: all those many judgmental, exclusive, better-than-thou parts!? Why does Jesus always shine so much light on such little sentences, like “love thy neighbor”?

    And where does Jesus get off making brand new commandments!? You know, like: “Love your enemies” -- when Moses was very clear: We should kill them! Rid the land of them, for the enemies of Israel are an abomination! Moses knew better than to ask the people to “love” their enemies! Everyone knows you should KILL them!
    Who does Jesus think he is? A new “Moses”? Making up laws as he goes along!?

    Frankly, the Pharisees and scribes and teachers of the Law should not have been so surprised, if you ask me. According to Deuteronomy (which was their favorite book of “Mosaic Law”), Moses himself fore-saw the day when One would arise from among the people who would be a leader “like unto Moses.”

    In the text we read from Deuteronomy 18, Moses says: “The Lord (Yahweh), your God, will raise up for you a prophet like me   from among your own people.” Jesus is one of their own in a way   that Moses was not!

    You see, Moses -- raised as an Egyptian prince in his childhood and serving as a Midianite shepherd in his adult years -- was always something of an outsider as he led the Hebrew slaves through the wilderness.

    Moses, as an 80-year-old adult, coming from outside Egypt, wasn't seen as "one of them." He hadn’t been a slave. Moses had been sent to them from elsewhere in order to save them. But now, shortly before he died, Moses promises that “one of their own” -- someone from ordinary slave-stock Hebrew heritage -- would be "raised up" by God in the future to save them.

        “I will raise up for them a prophet,” the Lord
    Yahweh is quoted as saying (verse 18), “like you (Moses)
    from among their own people. I will put my words in the
    mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything
    that I command.”

    When Moses died (as we heard in this morning’s second reading: Deut. 34:8-9), Joshua took over leading the people into the Promised Land. He was wise, inspired, courageous, and the Israelites obeyed him… and Joshua clearly was one of their own. Joshua had been a slave in Egypt!
    But the Deuteronomist historian goes on to say: “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like unto Moses, whom Yahweh-God knew face-to-face.” (That was written, most likely, during the Exile period. For 1500 years the Jews were awaiting their new Moses!)

    So, according to the Bible itself, Joshua was not thought of as the New Moses. That new Law-giver Leader, who would be vested with first-hand revelatory power like Moses had had from God, was yet to appear on the Jewish horizon.

    Later prophets, such as Samuel (who selected and anointed David to be Israel’s king) were well-respected “men of God” -- leaders of the people -- but none of them were considered “like unto” Moses’ stature. Elijah, Isaiah, & Jeremiah were dramatic prophets with long careers and memorable ministries, who could (and did!) call wayward people back to fidelity with the Covenant of Moses’ Torah, but none of them had the authority to change it!

    The prophets could call people to repent -- to realign themselves with the Laws of Moses -- but that’s all they could do. None of them presumed the right (nor the authority) to change it! Moses had laid down the Law for all Jews for all time. No one was expected to go against it, let alone to CHANGE it!

Amos and Ezekiel, Hosea and Daniel, and the rest of the Prophets right up to John the Baptist, could call the Jewish people back to the Bible, to repent of their social injustice and idolatries, and to bring themselves into re-alignment with God as known through Moses, but they did not try to reveal anything “new” about God.

        “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel
         like unto Moses, whom Yahweh-God knew face-to-
        face. He was unequaled for all the signs and
        wonders that the Lord-God sent him to perform...
        and all the mighty deeds and all the displays of
        power that Moses performed in the sight of all.”

    These closing words of Deuteronomy -- the end of the Pentateuch -- leave the readers with an unfulfilled expectation… God had promised to raise up from among their own people “a prophet like Moses” and it hadn’t happened! By the time of Jesus, the people of Israel had been waiting 2,000 years!

Oh, there were a bunch of Judges who communicated with God (and who interpreted Moses’ Torah) for the first 1,000 years -- people like Gideon, Samson, Deborah, and Ruth -- and then came a second thousand years of Kings -- Saul and David, Solomon and the rest -- together with the Prophets who did their best to keep the kings in line.

    But by the time Jesus came on the scene, it had been 1,000 years since David’s dynasty had been on the throne, and still no “Son of David” had arisen from among the people to take his place, let alone    a prophet like unto Moses! The time was ripe for a Messiah/Moses! When Jesus began to preach and teach and to do miracles, they thought: maybe Jesus is the One Moses had been speaking about!

    Jesus, who is said to have been “unequaled in his generation” for all the signs & wonders that God sent him to perform... Jesus, with the words of God so in his mouth that when he spoke them, they carried the authority of a “new commandment”... the crowds saw in him some-thing of Moses, something of David, something of God! This was big!

    You see, Moses, the Law-giver, and David, the King, had been so elevated in popular imagination -- set on so high a pedestal of near-divinity over the intervening millennia -- that their two roles in the foundation of Israel seemed out of reach for anyone else... King David and the great Lawgiver Moses were beyond any comparison with any other mere mortal! The laws of Moses were the religious "measuring-stick" against which the words and deeds of any would-be Messiah would be forever measured.

    In America (I suppose) it would be like asking: will there ever be another George Washington or Abraham Lincoln?   Another Thomas Jefferson?

Germans could ask: will there ever be another religious leader like Martin Luther, or statesman like Bismarck? You see, over time, national “founders” tend to take on almost “mythic” proportions. For Israel (& for biblical history), how could anyone ever be as great as Moses had been? (!) And yet, Moses himself predicted that there would be, someday, another who would equal his role in history.

It wasn’t Joshua (his successor), nor David (the King); it wasn’t the prophet Samuel, nor Elijah. It would be someone who, like Moses, would establish a new spiritual foundation for the people of God... One who, like Moses, would inaugurate a new age in human history. Moses had said so, but his followers really don’t believe him! Not after 2,000 years!

    So when Jesus begins to talk like a new Moses, and gets a following among the people, and begins to contrast his ideas with Moses’, the Pharisees (interpreters of Torah) resist it & resent it.

    But the crowds see in Jesus a fulfillment of their long-awaited “prophet like unto Moses”... they see in him a new “Son of David, King of Israel.” In fact, they shout it out on Palm Sunday (next week), to the consternation of the scribes and Pharisees!

    How do we know that Jesus’ followers believed this prediction referred to him? Mainly, because the New Testament says so in two places: first, in Acts 3:22-23, where Peter specifically applied this quotation from Deuteronomy 18 to Jesus in his great “Pentecost” sermon; and second, in Acts 7:37, where the deacon Stephen applied it to Jesus in his speech before the Sanhedrin… just before he was stoned to death! Obviously, the religious traditionalists were not prepared to let any mere mortal eclipse the authority of Moses, and those who said that Jesus had done so were subject to be killed!

    To me, this is the crux of the matter: faithful traditionalists -- who uphold the “status quo,” who “keep the rules,” all well and good in their own eyes, with all the weight (& honor!) of their forefathers… (and fore-mothers) prompting them not to change what they had in-herited from on high and of old -- these faithful traditionalists shake their heads in resistance & regret when a new Spirit blows through the people, liberating them, and energizing them with new hope and enthusiasm -- setting the captives free: preaching Good News to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, cleansing lepers, offering new life to the dead and the lame. No one had done such wonders since Moses.

    Moses & his methods, the law & its enforcers, their God-in-a-box (in the Temple) on their Holy Hill Zion, together with its priesthood & system of sacrifices, was being undone by this renegade Rabbi Jesus!

    The early church believed that Jesus was, in fact, the long-awaited, long-promised “prophet, like unto Moses.” Jesus was the one who had been empowered by God to inaugurate a “new covenant” and whose uniqueness and character as a person would at least “equal” if not “exceed” that of Moses!

    Unlike other “prophets of old” -- whose function was to preserve and maintain the Covenant of Moses, and to point the people forward to the kind of future desired by God -- Jesus cut a brand new covenant (he struck a “new deal!”) where the former demands of the Law would be complemented by a covenant of “Forgiveness & Grace.” This was unexpected good news!

    This makes Jesus a special kind of “prophet.” Moses and Jesus alone, among the many people who “spoke the Word of God” in our Bible, were able to spell out a new kind of relationship with God -- not a fickle, fluctuating, unpredictable, capricious relationship but a “covenant” -- an orderly, comprehensive, steady kind of relationship, whose terms are clearly spelled out so as to be understood & carried out by both parties: by God and by us.

This “New” Covenant (articulated clearly in Jesus’ teachings and ultimately sealed with his own lifeblood!) was offered unconditionally to all human beings! The prophet “like unto Moses” had come, and the “Old” Covenant had grown in scope… and it had increased in grace. The Laws of Moses were not eliminated by Jesus, but rather enlarged.

    The faithful "traditionalists" who had dedicated their lives to keeping things the way they always had been were faced with change! Change that was being driven by the common people in the streets -- by fishermen from Galilee, formerly blind beggars, reformed prosti-tutes, tax-collectors, and even children! -- shouting: “Hosanna! Save us! Liberate us, Son of David, who comes in the name of the Lord!” (We’ll hear that Palm Sunday chant next week, but I mention it today because the common people felt Jesus’ power… and responded to it.)

    Jesus brought a Gospel perspective which allows adulterers to be pardoned (instead of stoned to death), allows Samaritans to be seen as “good” neighbors (instead of disparaged as foreign half-breeds, illegal immoral “alien” people), and allows way-ward rebellious children (like the Prodigal Son) to be “welcomed back home” with an embrace and a party (rather than denounced by his parents at the gate and stoned to death by the elders)!

    This Gospel that Jesus taught was nothing like what the tradi-tionalists believed, nothing like the way they acted, nothing like what they expected from a prophet who was supposed to be "like Moses."

    Jesus was thoroughly unlike the traditionalist religion which had been the mainstream for several centuries. They thought the Messiah would underscore their old-fashioned Moses-based Laws and ritual, but Jesus undercut them!

    For example, Moses had set up a whole “court” system to review each case of wrongdoing in order to decide the proper punishment! You know, things basic to human justice, such as: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, limb for limb, life for life...” We still follow Moses' pattern in American law. But Jesus didn't! Jesus says we should forgive wrongs, sins, debts, and trespasses against us. Every time we are asked, up to "70-times seven-times," if needs be!

Where does Jesus get off “by-passing” the lawyers & the elders by simply forgiving sins... and saying to the wrongdoer: “nor do I condemn thee, go in peace and sin no more!” Surely Moses would turn over in his grave!

    Moses said to give alms to the poor, and give to your kinsman, your brother in need. But Jesus says: “Give to everybody who asks of you.” (C’mon, Jesus, get real! “Everybody?” We would go broke!)

    Moses said that when you lend, you cannot take a man’s cloak as collateral, and you must keep the interest charges low because God considered “usury” (making money from money) unacceptable. (I wonder what our bankers & brokers would think of that!?) Jesus says: “Lend only to those from whom you have no hope of repayment.” (That would be economic suicide!)

    Jesus said: “If you are sued for your over-coat, give them your undergarment as well.” (What, and go away stark naked? Moses wouldn’t have wanted that! He had lots of rules against public nudity.)

    And how about this one from Jesus: “Sell all that you have and give to the poor, and then you will have riches in heaven.” Moses required sharing with the poor, but not giving it all away!

    These outrageous extensions of Moses’ Law were pretty much impossible for anyone to keep, thus rendering them “null and void.” But most of the time when Jesus said: “You’ve heard... but I tell you...”, he would then reverse what Moses had said! For example: "You've heard it said that we are to love our neighbor and to hate our enemy. But I say to you, love your enemy, and pray for those who persecute you." That was just too much! Who did Jesus think he was to supersede Moses! Did he think he was GREATER than Moses?

    Well, it’s only twice in biblical history that God took the initiative to cut a Covenant with a large number of human beings. The first time was Moses’ Ten Commandments (which now include more than 600 additional Laws that were added to Torah over time)… and the second covenant was offered by Jesus for the forgiveness of sin and reconcil-iation of humanity as a newly-constituted “Kingdom of God” on earth, as in heaven.

    In both cases, the participants of the covenant-making were instructed to commemorate it by a symbolic re-enactment at regular intervals. For Moses, the re-birth of their nation Israel through the gift of Torah (the first Covenant) is remembered in the Exodus story and re-enacted in the Passover Seder (which we will host in Patterson Hall on Maundy Thursday, April 21, at 6 o’clock. I hope you’ll be there.).

    For Christians, the symbolic re-enactment of the Second Coven-ant is Jesus’ “Last Supper” or “Holy Communion” (and here at Los Altos UCC, we do it on the first Sunday of every month, as well as a few other special occasions, like we will this year at Easter Sunrise.)

    We know that change does not come easily.

But we cannot give in and give up to the traditionalists and other supporters of the status quo lest we quench the Spirit and kill the new life Jesus brings. Be bold in extending the blessing that Christ offers!

    The Pharisees and Teachers of the Law were invited by Jesus (and by the early church) to participate in the New Covenant… the New “Testament” Jesus brought… as are we all. They resisted that invitation in their day, and they resented Jesus for eclipsing the traditions of Moses. We rejoice that Jesus brought us the Gospel of salvation through grace!    And, frankly, that makes all the difference.

                                                   Amen.

Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh? (a sermon based on the Book of Exodus, Chapters 2:23 - 3:15)

2011-03-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

March 27, 2011

    That remarkable little dialog between a burning bush and Moses is familiar to most of us, I'm sure, from Sunday School classes, or from the epic movie versions (like Charlton Heston’s “The Ten Commandments” or Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks cartoon version “The Prince of Egypt”). Still, since not all of us have seen the movie, a few remarks are in order to refresh the setting (the situation) in which Moses found himself. I call it "Moses' Major Mid-life Crisis"!

    The setting for the “burning bush” story is Mount Horeb, in the Arabian desert, between Egypt & Saudi Arabia. This is an area that occasionally flares up in Middle Eastern turmoil. The Sinai peninsula, the border of the Gaza strip.

    Moses was there as a shepherd, a fugitive from Egypt -- living "in-cognito," hiding out in that Sinai No-man's-land between Egypt and Midian.

    The sight of a distant fire caught Moses’ attention. Even in the blistering heat of a Middle Eastern desert, things don't just "burst into flame" (spontaneous combustion). Presumably, there was a person who set that bush on fire. So, who might it have been? Was the bush burning by accident? Had it been set aflame as an act of war? Or, more benign, maybe just to cook a meal?

Moses would have wondered: who? Was it an Egyptian who had set the bush aflame? Was it an escaping Hebrew slave? Who had set the bush on fire?

    Who set the bush on fire?? Well, who cares!   It probably makes no difference to us, so many thousands of years later -- but because of Moses' personal story, the question of "Who is out there?" was vitally important!

    You see, long ago Moses had been born to a Hebrew slave family in Egypt, and Pharaoh had ordered him (and all the other slave-baby boys his age) to be killed. (We talked about that last Sunday.)

Moses still remembers his sister, Miriam (who saved his life when Pharaoh’s daughter found him in the basket in the Nile River), and Moses probably wonders about his older brother, Aaron, although he hasn't seen either of them in years. Have they become “fugitives,” like him? Or are Aaron and Miriam still captive in Egypt? Moses does not know.

    By the time of today's story, Moses is living among Arabs (Midianites) -- a foreigner, married to Jethro's daughter -- but his roots are (still) Hebrew. A part of him -- his blood & bone, his brain, his soul -- is in solidarity with the Israelite slaves. And it was certainly possible that the bush had been "set fire" by an escaping slave from the huge limestone quarry near Mount Horeb -- from which the huge blocks of stone were cut & dragged (by slave labor) to Egypt.

    Of course, the second possibility was that the fire had been set by an Egyptian slave-driver. This would be dangerous for Moses, because the Egyptians had a score to settle with him.

    You see, Moses had once been one of them. Moses had been a “Prince of Egypt!” A ruler of Egypt, just like Rameses. As a child, Moses had been adopted by Pharaoh's daughter -- raised in the palace as a prince! (We heard his childhood story last week.) Imagine: that same little kid (deep down in Moses) whose heart was in solidarity with the slaves, had tried to be a dutiful child to his adopted Egyptian parents, including the very man who wanted him dead.

    With a conflicted childhood like that, is there any surprise that Moses was in for a Major Mid-life Crisis?

    For all of us, childhood is a well of deep emotion... And that's spelled: E-MOTION! Childhood is “Energy in motion!” The energy of one’s childhood doesn’t just burn off...it charges our memory.

    Experiences, good and bad, etch lines into our developing psyche.

We discover who we are, as children, from what happens to us -- from how others relate to us, and from how we “process” those experiences into our lives.
And when those identities (those memories) “conflict” -- as they did for Moses, and as they do for many of us -- that energy still has go somewhere. For a child to survive emotionally, they "pack those harsher memories down" deep. They want to forget… but can’t.

    Moses “feels” himself to be the adopted child of a loving Egyptian family -- Pharaoh's pride and joy; but he also “knows” himself to be an illegal alien, a slave-boy, under a death decree from that same Pharaoh-father.

    It makes me think of so many of our children (in this day of divorce and abandonment, of parents who are in prisons, or wasted on drugs, or in poverty) who are carrying burdens similar to Moses'..Children who are torn emotionally when they must choose between their parents: between two lifestyles, living on a shuttle between two neighborhoods...two homes...two schools...

Maybe the conflicted childhoods of our California kids are not as drastic as that of a slave-child/adopted-prince, whose own father has put a death sentence on him... but I have seen many absent fathers (resenting the idea of sending their "ex" alimony & child support) who choose to give no aid to fami-lies with dependent children, and then vote to cut the state & county funds, too!

    Moses was torn: he loved Miriam and Aaron, and he loved Pharaoh's family as well. His heart was in solidarity with the slaves, and full of loyalty to Egypt’s royalty. He endured that “schizophrenic” childhood by "packing down" the emotions -- keeping his identity secret -- just to survive.

    But then, as it must, one-day, those emotions erupted. Moses has blood on his hands... he is a murderer! That's the score the Egyptians have to settle!

    Maybe you remember the story (in Exodus, Chapter 2): how Moses saw a slave-driver beating a slave -- it happened all the time, you know. But this time, as a young man, no longer a child, Moses didn't look away. Instead, he looked around, to see whether he would be caught. … And then he killed the slave-driver, and hid the body in the sand. With that, Moses became a murderer.

    When you think about the family histories of criminals on death row (people like the Menendez brothers & Carla Faye Tucker & other “dead men walking”), you hear stories of childhood abuse & abandonment. And it makes me wonder: how many gang members, who have turned into murderers, come from disrupted and dysfunctional homes?
Well, Moses was one of those -- one of the first to "go public" with his terrible childhood story, but it's still happening in families in Southern California.

    Moses, the Hebrew slave, knew he had to keep his real identity secret, or risk being killed by Pharaoh's decree. And now the older Moses, the Egyptian murderer, had to keep his new identity secret as well. He dealt with it (as many of us do) by running away. He fled into the desert... away from the slaves he loved, like Miriam & Aaron; and away from his family in Pharaoh's court, too. To re-lieve the pain of his past, he let go of his future hopes as a “Prince of Egypt.” He fled into the desert and found a comfortable new routine: an escape.

    Like most of us, Moses probably expected that the passing of time, and the isolation of a remote place (an “anonymous” existence) would wipe away the wounds of childhood memory. He believed that time and distance would put behind him the mistakes of his early adulthood: in other words, the murder just wouldn’t matter anymore. And so Moses settled into a new identity -- a third identity -- herding his father-in-law's sheep at Mount Horeb...where a fire in the distance caught his eye.

    Whether this burning bush had been lit by a slave, or by an Egyptian, it made sense for this fugitive (Moses) to duck out of sight! So far as he could tell, the fire had just begun (recently), for the bush was not yet consumed. The person who lit it must be nearby! And so, hee waited, and watched...

    As time passed, Moses realized that the bush continued to burn, without being consumed by the flames. At this rate, it may have been burning all day -- perhaps, even for several days... The person who set it on fire could well be long gone... And with that, Moses was able to stop being anxious about his personal safety.

    You know, I'm like that... Sometimes it takes a lot of time passing -- a lot of thought, a lot of other events going by -- before I stop being anxious and afraid about things (at the core of my life). So, let's give ourselves time! This story of Moses at the burning bush tells me: it’s okay to give ourselves time… We’ll never hear God’s call to do great things, if we are afraid, on the run, still hiding out, ducking behind bushes, doing our bets to stay anonymous.

    Once Moses was no longer afraid, he became curious. He approached the bush for a better look, maybe for an explanation of this odd phenomenon...
You can imagine his surprise when an unexpected voice told him to "Take care! You're standing on holy ground!" Moses was really shaken! Not only did he remove his sandals (as he was instructed to do), but he covered his face as well!

    Moses was AFRAID of the presence of God -- and, as it turned out, he was afraid of the task to which he was called. His words “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh?” is the Mid-Life Crisis Moses must face.

    Now, I don't want to be too hard on Moses, because I'm too much like him. I probably wouldn't have handled that kind of experience any better than he did! Still, it makes me wonder: How many of us are really prepared to risk "hearing a call by God" into action? How many of us have the ability to risk hearing and trusting a "felt" presence of God in the midst of everyday life? Probably few of us. Moses was no exception!

    I admit, this was pretty dramatic! But that also makes me wonder: how many LESS DRAMATIC attempts had God made in Moses' life to get his attention over the years?

You see, when people live with their emotions suppressed (with their painful memories packed-down), that kind of pressure is hard to reverse; their depression is hard to lift! Sometimes it takes something really dramatic to get through the "denial" -- and touch "the little kid" inside, who is bravely trying to hold their world together. Moses just may not have “heard” the earlier calls!

    I wonder, as well, how many encounters with the Living God have been attempted (and missed) in our lives because God wasn't DRAMATIC enough to divert our attention from our "routine" personal agenda? How many encounters with God have we missed because "God wasn't dramatic enough" to catch our eye, or patient enough to calm our fears, or surprising enough to motivate our curiosity, or clear enough to assure our involvement. (?)

    I wonder about that because I don't know how often God has failed to get my attention, or yours, or Moses'… But one thing I DO KNOW from our text... Yahweh-God took the initiative in approaching Moses. That's who set the fire, surprising as it may be! God!

    Yahweh-God also took the initiative in "hearing the cry" of the people, in "seeing" their oppression, and "feeling" their pain! (Read it again: Exodus 3:7)
    "The Lord said: I have seen the affliction of my people who are
in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters;
I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up..."

That's the kind of God we have! One who takes the initiative, and One who feels our pain. Your secret burdens, your family skeletons, your personal pain is known to God. You can be sure, God weeps with you!

    But more than that... This God-Yahweh declares that plans are underway to relieve that pain! To bring the oppressed children OUT, and to bring them UP! And you -- you who (despite your own pain & fears) hear the call of God -- you will perform an important task in BRINGING IT ALL ABOUT... You will be given the responsibility, & you will get the credit, for this liberating event.

    "Come," says God, "I will send you to Pharaoh."

    Say, what? Get mixed in with politics? Now, that's a challenging thought, even in this peaceful "non-election" year, when no death-sentence hangs over any of us. Why would anyone want to face down Pharaoh? I mean, he’s got all the power; our hands are empty!

    So, quite understandably, Moses replied: "Wait a minute... Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?" There you have it: the big Mid-Life Crisis Question:"Who am I?"

    Faced with a decision that touches his emotion, draws on his memory, and addresses the very core of his identity, Moses asks: "Who am I?" Faced with a clear calling, and the need to make a commitment, Moses asks: "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh?"

    Well, who IS he? Why is Moses the "chosen individual" to carry out this particular role in God's liberating plan? What's HE got that's so SPECIAL?

    Like any of us, in his own eyes (I suppose), Moses was just "a normal guy" -- no more "special" than you or me. But, you see, "normal" is self-de-
fined. Whatever has made us "the way we are" seems to us, entirely "normal."

    And so Moses asked, as we would too, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh?"
Well, who IS he? In his own eyes, and in the eyes of his contemporaries, two things stand out:

    First, as we've already seen, Moses was a murderer. I'm sure he'd rather forget that bit of back-ground information, but it happened. It's a big part of who Moses is! It's why he fled into the Sinai desert. It's why he never returned home to the families he loved. Moses knew that he had blood on his hands.

    So, does God have any use for a murderer to help liberate oppressed people? I guess you could ask the Palestinian intifada and their long-time leader Yassar Arafat... or the Irish Republican Army, whether killing has a place in overturning an oppressive regime. You could ask the black leaders of South Africa, or the “freedom fighters” in Central America, whether murderers can be useful as "liberators." Ask the American militia who fought the British at Con-cord bridge. Does God have a place for a murderer in the effort to free enslaved people? It's a tough question. But the Bible says: Yes, Yahweh chose one...

    "Who am I?" asks Moses, "that I should go to Pharaoh?" Murderer to murderer, demanding blood for blood...

    Second (and perhaps more crucial), Moses was generally regarded as an Egyptian. The Jewish writers of the Bible down-play the implications (after all, Moses is their Hero!), but to his contemporaries, Moses was Egyptian!

    Again, for two reasons: first, Moses was raised in the palace. He spoke Egyptian, he dressed like an Egyptian, he rode in chariots as a member of the Royal Family! That, in any culture, is a really BIG DEAL. It’s no small thing for Moses to have been a Prince of Egypt!

    But the second reason he was regarded as an Egyptian is more profound: There were no Hebrew boys of Moses' age in all of Egypt.

    Remember the reason he was adopted... The year that Moses was born, the slaves had suffered their greatest trauma: all the boys, who WOULD HAVE BEEN Moses' age, were drowned in the Nile River; by order of Pharaoh, the baby boys were fed to the crocodiles! That memory was a bitter one! It was a deep emotional wound to the people of Israel -- just as (I might add) King Herod's decree to kill all the boy-children in the region around Bethlehem became a similar emotional wound at Jesus' birth!

In both cases (where Kings can do as they please, and killing is the order of the day) the sight of a boy ( or a young man), the very age your child would have been (had they not been murdered!) is a reminder of the pain – it would be like rubbing salt in the parents’ wound. Moses (in the eyes of the Hebrew slaves), like Jesus (to the bereaved people of Judea), wore their years like a badge of betrayal. They had survived the bloody curse that had killed their own babies! Jesus knew it; & Moses knew it. They lived it! It was their story, after all.

    How do people survive that kind of pain?    …?   Mostly through denial, I suppose. Ignore it, if you can. Avoidance works wonders.   Emotional with-drawl. …   Sometimes anger... a lot of scape-goating … blaming.     In any case, I doubt the Hebrew slaves would EVER have selected MOSES as their liberator! But Yahweh did...

    God saw, in this mixed-up Egyptian/Hebrew slave-boy/prince, precisely the right person to approach Pharaoh in his court. And, you know, it kind’a makes sense... Moses knew his way around Pharaoh’s court. He knew the language. He had one foot in each world...

    "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh?"

    Moses was a family man at this point, settled and secure in Midian.    He had a son of his own, now, and his wife had a good name in her community. Why in God’s name would he return to Egypt, where there was a price on his head? (!) He had found the comfort of a routine-job to ease his anxiety: trading the prince for the pauper; the slave-owner for the hired-shepherd...

    Wandering around a remote region of the Arabian desert, in relative solitude, caring for his father-in-law's flock... Why kick up a desert storm? "Why should I go to Pharaoh, and bring the slaves out?"

    But even then, even there, God was still at work... shaping him, preparing him precisely for the task at hand.

You see, even this routine -- this escape from awareness -- was suitable training for God's "chosen individual." Yahweh-God needed someone who knew the territory; who had the reactions of a hardened nomad. Someone who knew how to survive in the desert wilderness of Sinai, and not for himself alone...

    For all those comfortable years, while his brain and emotions were "on hold," Moses had learned to be responsible for the lives of a whole flock in that wilderness. What better apprenticeship could the leader of the Exodus have had than this? (That tells me: even the ruts we get ourselves into, our routines and escapes, can prove suitable for God's plan in your life. Just trust God to know how to bring it together!)

    All these crazy threads of one man's life -- conflicted and confused though they were (!) -- suddenly came together! When Moses encountered God, he caught a vision of himself.      "Who am I," he asks... "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh?"

    And God could have told him, step by step, who he was, and WHY HE SHOULD go to Pharaoh; and why HE should lead the slaves through the wilder-ness. But God did not do that. God told Moses only: "I will be with you."

    "Well, then," Moses continues, "which of the gods shall I say has sent me? The god of THEIR fathers (Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob), or the god of the Midianite Arabs I live with now? Are you the god of Pharaoh's family (Aton), or the national god of Egypt (Amun-Re)? What shall I say to them!? WHO ARE YOU??"

    And God revealed the Divine Name to Moses: "Yahweh" we say (or from the German: “Jehovah”). Translated, means, simply: "I AM WHO I AM."

    With those words, Moses came to know the God Yahweh.

And with those words, Moses came to know the man, Moses. I AM WHO I AM. In that moment of revelation -- when he connected himself personally with "the Great I AM" -- Moses found a whole lifetime of ready resources: his own identity!

    He found who he already was -- plus the promise of even greater resources, in the words: "I will be with you."

That's the kind of God we have! That's God's own promise: "I AM who I AM" and "I will be with you." Now, you… just be who you are!

Hallelujah, & AMEN!

Israel’s Four Founding Mothers: the Rebellious Women Shif’ra and Pu’ah, Miriam & Pharaoh’s Daughter (a sermon based on Exodus 1:15-22; 2:1-10)

2011-03-20T11:34:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

March 20, 2011

    Today's two Scripture readings, which begin the greatest escape story ever lived (the story we call "the Exodus"), is dramatic and courageous, but also surprisingly "down-home humble." What we discover is that behind the great men -- behind Pharaoh and Moses -- are innumerable common folk, four of whom we will meet today: the midwives Shif’ra & Pu’ah, and Moses’ sister Miriam, and Pharaoh’s unnamed daughter. I call all four of them "rebellious women" (for that is how society usually portrays its "free" women) but we’ll also see that they were not only rebellious, but creative & courageous, as they stood up to King Pharaoh & his death-decree.

    I like the fact that the authors of Exodus give the two mid-wives names... but the Pharaoh in the story remains anonymous! Was it Pharaoh Rameses, as suggested in the Prince of Egypt movie? Was it Akhenaten? Or maybe King Tut -- Tutankhamen? Some scholars suggest it was Tut-Mose, since his name derives from the same root: Moses. We just don’t know.

    Pharaoh doesn’t have a name in Exodus. We call him “Pharaoh” but that is really only his official title, and it means “Son of Ra” (Son of God!).

    Maybe Kings like Pharaoh don’t need a real name, because they’ve got power; they've got prestige; they claim dominion over everything!

    Pharaoh tells his people that he is the Son of God, and that he rules as a God-King... He tells them that he has divine authority to control the world, control the weather, spewing forth wisdom and issuing commands... to which his people must respond with unfaltering obedience, faithfulness, loyalty, or they will die!
    Please notice: Pharaoh doesn’t have a name in our Bible. But Shif’ra does -- and it means “beautiful.” And Pu’ah has a name (the feminine form of Push) which means “springing about like a young lamb.”

    These women may have no worldly power, compared to the almighty king, but they have their names. And they hold on to their identity like it’s all they have in the world. Their names are KNOWN, to them and to us, for all time! They never forget who they are, and whose they are! They don’t, after all, belong to Pharaoh. They belong to the Lord: Yahweh!

    Let’s back up a minute to how the story began: a new Pharaoh took the throne in Egypt, and he refused to acknowledge Joseph's family's claim to the Land of Goshen.

    In fact, it was worse than that! The Egyptian leader looked at the healthy Hebrew people, growing numerous and strong in the fertile land around Alexandria -- and contrasted it with the grinding poverty and indentured servitude of his Egyptian subjects. And he feared them!

    The children of Israel were too independent. They had retained a separate political and economic identity, when (due to the hardship of famine) the rest of the land had become subject to Pharaoh. Since, as he saw it, it was a decree by a former Pharaoh that had granted them this "special status," then a decree of the current Pharaoh was all it would take to reverse that earlier decision.

    Pharaoh, afraid of the growing number of immigrants in their midst, made the Hebrews into slaves (forced laborers). He not only took their land away, and denied them their civil rights, he decided a bit of "ethnic cleansing" was in order. Genocide... simply eliminate the next generation. Midwives (nurses) were ordered to kill all baby boys born to the Hebrews.

    Pharaoh's decree reminds us of a similar decree some 2,000 years later, ordered by King Herod (Herod the Great), to destroy all male children in the region around Bethlehem. In both cases (and in others throughout the bloody political history of the world), we find rulers who have great armies and bureaucracies, legions of soldiers & state laws, with all the imperial power support of their day, who are afraid of infants!

         Here we have stories of kings -- heads of hierarchies, the absolute pinnacle of the pyramids of power! -- feeling threatened by newborn baby boys! How pitiful is that!?

    Despite all his forces and fearful decrees, his legal-sanctioned ability to coerce and to kill, Pharaoh meets with rebellion. Thinking himself to be divine, the King is not prepared for people who "fear God."   You see, it is said of Shif’ra and Pu’ah, the Hebrew mid-wives:   "They feared God..." and that was the source of their death-defying courage!

    The King’s decree echoes through the brickyards of Egypt: “If it is a Jewish boy, you will kill it!” (Where does the God-King get off making such a hellish decree?!)

    Racial ignorance, I suppose, is part of it. The King already has stated that the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for Egypt to control! The people of Egypt were in dread of the Jews, the Bible tells us. That’s why they made their lives so bitter. Fear, jealousy... Their ignorance and racial hatred escalated into violence & death decrees. (If he’s not one of us, he deserves to be dead!) Nazi’s, the KKK’ers, bigots of every stripe…

    With the threat of death hanging over them, and with extinction of their people before them, Shif’ra & Pu’ah have a greater regard for the life-giving God than for the death-dealing King. As the Bible puts it: “They feared God, and did not do as the king commanded them, but let the male children live!” By trusting God, at the risk of their own lives, these two mid-wives set in motion a God-pleasing plan to bring life out of death... to make a way out of no way. As marginal and insignificant as these women are, it is their resistance (in God’s name) that defeats Pharaoh’s flawless pro-death administration, and gives Moses a chance.

These two women, who fear God, show their independence -- show their compassion and their courage -- by making creative use of "the little" that life had dealt them. What do they have?   Lowly jobs... but life-giving ones. They are, like so many under-employed workers at the bottom rung of the social ladder, not expected to take any initiative.
They are expected simply to DO what their "superiors" have decided. They’re told what to do.

    The creative and courageous acts of Shif’ra and Pu’ah can teach us a lesson: No matter how humble & under-paid your position, do not give up the independence of your thought nor taking responsibility for your actions.

    For example, in retrospect, we realize the whole killing machine of the Nazis in the Holocaust of World War II could have been delayed … if Siemens Gas employees had mixed their chemicals wrong (on purpose), or if Krupp machinists had built faulty spigots and leaky gas chamber doors, or if railroad workers had jimmied the switches, or if Allied bombers had targeted the tracks to Auschwitz. Little, low-paying jobs, where the workers are expected to "do their duty" and "ask no questions," are usually the ones who actually DO the dirty work of the hierarchy.

    It's the common people (not official figureheads) who keep the machinery of state in operation, by doing its filing, working in the mail-rooms, doing data-entry, nursing... So, before you ever say: "I am only one person," look at what you DO! See how it affects the whole system.

    Shif’ra and Pu’ah had jobs to do, and they were given a new law to follow. An unjust law; a death-dealing law; but it was the law of the land!

    Their first act of rebellion was to use their humble jobs to create, not to destroy. They kept on birthing babies as before. And when they were called on the carpet, they took the blame for "not killing" the Hebrew infants, as they had been ordered to do. They played dumb; maybe slow.

    I suspect Shif’ra & Pu’ah knew that those "men at the top" already thought that midwives were "stupid, lazy, and slow." So they used it to their advantage. They USED the classism (of bosses "looking down their noses") and the sexism (the patriarchal stereotyping of women) in a creative way to keep the babies alive! THAT, after all, was the priority. They were on God's side (given a choice, they would choose life)!

    And they used the fears of Pharaoh in a creative way! Already Pharaoh believed the Hebrews were too many and too mighty. "The Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel," says our Bible. Frankly, those two neighboring nations (Israel & Egypt) despite the peace accords they’ve had in place for thirty years, are still quite suspicious of each other!

    Then as now, folks don't usually get to know the things they are afraid of (that's why a "phobia" become so powerful in our psyche!).    We avoid the ones we perceive as "different" from us… and they are (usually) the ones we fear. And so, in ignorance, our fears grow irrational.

    Called to account for their sloppy performance of a simple task, the women play on the king’s ignorance and racial fear -- throwing his own words back at him! “The Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women!” they say to the King, when he calls them to explain their failure to kill.   Well, what does macho-Pharaoh know about Egyptian women, let alone about Hebrew women!?

    We know he's already decided that Hebrews are "not like" his own people, so Shif’ra and Pu’ah can play on his ignorance and his fear, as well as his sexist stereotyping, to make their case (fraudulent though it is).

And Pharaoh (the all-wise, all-powerful, God-King) takes the bait… hook-line-&-sinker! “Unlike the Egyptian women (who are weak & slow), these Hebrew women are vigorous! They give birth before we can even get there!” Well, what do male-politicians and male-priests and King-Pharaohs know about birthing babies? Guys like that wouldn't be "caught dead" in a Lamaze class; so -- as a result of their rebellious subterfuge -- those Hebrew baby boys didn't die on the birthing stool!

    Giving up on these apparently incompetent women, Pharaoh turns to the public at large -- the Egyptian people themselves -- and commands them to act upon their racial hatred, like the Nazis did! And to do so freely, with divine blessing from their Leader. “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but let their daughters live.” Pharaoh should have watched out for the daughters, if you ask me! By comparison to these courageous & clever women, the men are kind a slow & harmless... like worker bees.

    Everything that has happened so far sets the stage for Act Two -- our second reading -- which has a new set of characters. It’s the familiar story of Baby Moses being set in a reed basket in the bulrushes by his mother (a woman!) to be discovered shortly by Pharaoh’s own daughter (yet another woman!) who recognizes him to be a slave-baby, but chooses to disregard her father’s command, and decides to raise him as her own son. So there!

I hope you’ve noticed that all the main characters in this scene, as well as in the last, are daughters, women, mothers, rebellious & vigorous! These are God’s people, opening doors for freedom -- and life -- in a reign dedicated to slavery and death.

    Those powerful Egyptian men, who tried to regulate pregnancies -- because of their fears born from their racism and nationalism, and "fear of the stranger" (themes we hear again in our day, as politicians point to "the problem of welfare mothers," and as the media paints fearful pictures of growing numbers of immigrants...) -- Those rulers were stymied by two ordinary women, who played on their fears, saying: "Yes, the Hebrews are too strong, too many, too fast for us to keep up with." It was a lie; but since their explanation fit the stereotype of the ruling racism, classism & sexism, it was accepted. (Those are the lies we have to watch out for!)

    And, friends, God was pleased (the Bible says) with those creative, courageous, rebellious women, who made a fool of Pharaoh. And God "dealt well with them". And the people of Israel continued to multiply and to grow "very strong" even in their captivity.

    There we have the first two "rebellious" women who helped bring Moses into being -- the first two "patriots of the Exodus" … workers toward independence -- named Shif’ra and Pu’ah: creative, courageous women, whose names should go down in history. If it weren't for these first two "Mothers of their Country," Moses would never have been born!

There were powerfully oppressive forces at work in the world 4,000 years ago, but God’s life-giving plans prevailed over the king’s death decree… one woman at a time. That’s the way faith works. Trust it!
In the four or five minutes remaining, I’d like you to meet the next two "Founding Mothers" of the Exodus: Moses’ sister Miriam and Pharaoh's (unnamed) daughter. I guess technically, neither one should be called a “mother” since one was a sister and the other a virgin daughter, but since they had crucial roles in the founding of Israel -- because it was their efforts that allowed Moses to survive infanticide -- and ultimately to grow-up into a young man -- I count them both among the Bible’s heroes!

In the second Scripture reading, we already heard their story: let me just re-cap... Moses' mother and family hid their baby for three months, hoping to avoid Pharaoh's death decree.

When further avoidance was impossible, they had a creative solution: They fulfilled "the letter of the Law" by throwing the baby into the Nile River... but they disobeyed the "spirit of the Law" by providing him first with a water-proof basket. They threw him in the river, as ordered, but he didn't drown! The baby lived.

    Sister Miriam followed the basket downstream... Has there ever been a more "innocent" spy!? Miriam was just a little slave girl: totally "beneath suspicion."   There would be no threat in the likes of her!

    The basket was recovered by Pharaoh's daughter, a girl totally "above suspicion."

Pharaoh’s daughter wasn't about to follow her daddy's decree. She saw that little life and she loved it, and it was SHE, Pharaoh's daughter, who named him "Moses," saying: "Because I drew him out of the water."

    Pharaoh's daughter made no attempt to cover it up. Clearly, she didn't think that Pharaoh's deadly decrees applied to her, privileged as she was to be part of the royal family. (A privilege which was extended as well to the newly-adopted Hebrew baby! Moses grew up as an Egyptian.) That rebellious daughter's freedom became the source of Moses' freedom.

    The creativity and courage of these young women does not stop here!

    Miriam steps out from among the bull rushes along banks of the Nile, and suggests that she might locate a nursing mother among the Hebrews who could suckle the baby as a surrogate until he was weaned and who could help raise this Hebrew baby for Pharaoh's daughter. And so, the circle comes 'round with an ironic twist: Moses' birth-mother, who could have been punished for her rebellious “independence,” is not only given permission by Pharaoh's daughter to raise the child, but now she will be paid (by Pharaoh's family!) to do so! (How cool is that!?)

    Independence is a blend of courage and creativity. It appears to ruling powers as "rebellion." Here we have four rebellious women: Shif’ra, Pu’ah, Miriam, and Pharaoh’s daughter (a princess of Egypt).

    Control-oriented people, whether in the guise of a family father or a Pharaoh, a compulsive boss or perfectionist instructor, will always prefer people who simply follow orders.   But, as God-fearing women and men, let us stand with the independent thinkers (like Shif’ra & Pu’ah, and Miriam, and Pharaoh’s daughter) -- stand with the creative & courageous among us, even if they seem a bit “rebellious.” They are willing to re-organize the status quo, if that’s what’s necessary: to re-think and re-pent. They’ll re-allocate power and re-define what’s important so long as it will make a better, fairer, more just world in the future.

    In God's name, we honor as "patriots," not the power-brokers and the warriors, not the death-decreeing policies of the ruling elite, but rather the humble heroes like Shif’ra, Pu’ah, Miriam, and Pharaoh's rebellious teen-age daughter -- models of courage and creativity.

    Let us not fear what human authorities can do; but let us work always for life (life for all)... even if it means occasionally having to stand against the forces of racism, sexism, classism, moneyed interests, violence or power, in order that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

    This morning we met four rebellious women who became Mothers of a New nation – a nation of freed slaves, the freed Hebrews – founding Mothers of the nation of Israel! Please come back next week to meet the man Moses, their son and brother, who survived genocide because of these four rebellious women’s efforts. Take courage! Let’s be more like them.
                                                Amen.

Reversal of Fortune: Be Ready for it! (a sermon based on Genesis 50:22-26, and Exodus 1:1-16)

2011-03-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

March 13, 2011

    The King of Egypt (Pharaoh) was a flawless administrator -- much like the orderly, no-nonsense (get-the-business-done, no-excuses, follow-orders) Nazi government in Hitler’s Germany 70 years ago. In fact, much like Hosni Mubarek, Cairo’s most recent 30-year “resident strong-man.”

    At the end of the Book of Genesis, Abraham’s great-grand-son Joseph (not Jesus’ father Joseph, but his namesake from 2,000 years earlier!), has helped the King of Egypt (Pharaoh) solidify his control over the land, the Egyptian economy, and the Egyptian people. He did so by knowing in advance that the country was about to enter a seven-year famine. For seven years, crops would fail. By predicting this severe reversal of fortune well in advance, Pharaoh had time to gather into storehouses sufficient grain and seed and other foodstuffs to survive.

    In appreciation for Joseph’s foresight and administrative help, Pharaoh allowed Joseph’s family – his father Jacob and his eleven brothers, together with their wives and children and their herds and flocks – to move out of Palestine (the Promised Land) -- where the famine had already begun -- and into the Nile River Delta (the land of Goshen) for the duration of the seven-year drought.

Genesis 46:26 says “All the persons belonging to Jacob who came into Egypt, who were his own offspring, not including the wives of his sons, were 66 persons in all! The children of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt, were two. [So, counting the spouses] all the persons of the house of Jacob – the house of Israel – who came into Egypt were 70.”
King Pharaoh said to Joseph (47:5): “Your father and your brothers have come to you. The land of Egypt is before you. Settle your father and your brothers in the best part of the land. Let them live in the land of Goshen. And if you know that there are capable men among them, put them in charge of my livestock!” Not only is that a generous “land-grant” from Pharaoh to these foreigners from the land of Canaan, the King is willing to entrust the care of his royal flocks and herds to the Israelites.

    Since we usually only hear about the harsh conditions of slavery, of ruthless taskmasters and onerous forced labor by the Hebrews slaves, it may be news to you -- a shocking realization -- that they started out in Egypt on the very best land and with Pharaoh’s help, on the top of the heap!

According to the Bible, with Joseph’s help Pharaoh had not only survived seven years of devastating famine, but had used the crisis to solidify his power. Pharaoh, like a World Bank, had doled out those seven years of welfare/aid “with strings attached.” By the end of Genesis 47, the King owned all the land, all the cattle, and all the people swore allegiance to Pharaoh – in fact, they willingly voted themselves a flat 20% annual tax!

Don’t believe me? Here’s how Genesis explains it (page 43, verse 13):

Now, there was no food in all the land, for the famine was very severe. The land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished because of the famine.

Joseph collected all the money to be found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan in exchange for the grain that they bought. And Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house.
When the money from the land of Egypt and from the land of Canaan was spent, all the Egyptians came to Joseph, and said: “Give us food! Why should we die before your eyes? For our money is gone!” And Joseph answered: “Give me your livestock, and I will give you food in exchange for… the horses, and the flocks, the herds, and the donkeys.” That year he supplied them with food in exchange for all their livestock.
When that year was ended, they came to him the following year.

    Now, let me remind you, Joseph knows the famine will last for seven years! With God’s insight and assistance, he and Pharaoh have saved up enough food and seed and other resources so that the people will be able to survive for all seven years! But instead of simply “carrying” them, like a national welfare-state, providing what they need… Joseph is “selling” their survival to them, one asset at a time. He knows that the next year, & the next, and the next three after that… will be one crop failure after another! He and the King could simply bail them out -- let them slide for the whole seven-years -- let them live from the accumulated assets until the famine lifted. But no, they use their “insider-information” to make some stock trades…

    (I resume reading at verse 18): When that year was ended, they came to him the following year (year 3), and said to Joseph: “We cannot hide from my lord that all our money is spent. And the herds of cattle are my lord’s. There’s nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our lands. Shall we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us, and our land, in exchange for food. We with our land will become slaves to Pharaoh. Just give us seed, so that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become desolate.”
    So, Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for King Pharaoh! All the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them. And the land became Pharaoh’s!
    As for the people, he made slaves of them, from one end of Egypt to the other. … Then Joseph said to the people (verse 23): “Now that I have this day bought you, and your land, for Pharaoh, here is seed for you! Sow the land. And at the harvests, you shall give one fifth to Pharaoh, and four-fifths shall be your own, as seed for the field (in the next year) and as food for yourselves and your households.”
    They said: “You have saved our lives! May it please my lord, we will be slaves to Pharaoh!” So Joseph made it a statute concerning the land of Egypt -- and it stands to this day (writes the author of Genesis, Chapter 47) -- that Pharaoh should have the fifth.”

    1/5th annually (a 20% tax) and we know there are 4 years to go!
    Don’t you think Joseph should level with the people and let them know that it’ll do no good to plant seed the next year, or the next? That’ll just be throwing good seed after bad, wilting before it matured. Putting them deeper in debt to Pharaoh, each tax season. Heartless economics, ruthless centralization of power, served King Pharaoh very well, and he richly rewarded Joseph… who did it!

Genesis 47:27: “Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt, in the region of Goshen. And they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied exceedingly.”

It’s a happy ending to the book of Genesis, I suppose, if you’re on Pharaoh’s side; or if you’re part of Joseph’s family (Israel). They take advantage of the unique seven-year situation – the reversal of fortune that was due to famine in the land – and they make out like bandits; or like Wall Street tycoons, or federal regulators & politicians who look the other way to the shady deals of their well-heeled patrons. Anything for a buck!

    What we learn from the end of the Book of Genesis in our Bible is that King Pharaoh’s power was based on having storehouses full of grain, while the rest of the world was starving! The King “unified” Egypt under his personal control. His alone was the money; his alone was the livestock; his was the property; his were the people, all Egypt enslaved & taxed 20%! Pharaoh had everything going for him! Except for one thing: his policies were pro-death. Not pro-life. God is not pleased with Pharaoh’s tyranny.

The “reversal of fortune” that put Pharaoh at the top of the pyramid of power, and subjected his entire population to coerced labor and grinding poverty, would one day have to be righted! But who would ever again have the power to turn things back around to justice in a system like that?

    At the end of Genesis, Pharaoh owned every-thing… and every-body! And, like a great capitalist, he kept reinvesting his “surplus” to gain greater market share, building bigger storehouses, enslaving more people. Pharaoh didn’t care who it hurt. After all, he made the rules. It may not seem fair; it may not be “justice”; but since Pharaoh made the laws, it was all “legal”! The Egyptians chafed under the heavy hand of Pharaoh. They didn’t like the reversal of fortune that put King Pharaoh on top and the Israelites next.
    Our first reading this morning, from Genesis Chapter 50 (the closing paragraph of that first book in our Bible) says that Joseph remained in Egypt, he & his father’s household. And I can see why: life was good! Life was easy. They were prosperous with every advantage over the masses. Now, it wasn’t the Promised Land. It wasn’t where Abraham had been told to settle by God, three generations earlier. It wasn’t their native homeland where they had formerly held title. To live in Egypt, as lords of the land, did not fulfill Scripture, nor was it in keeping with the Lord’s desire for the “chosen” people. But so long as life was good -- to their advantage -- the children of Israel stayed in Egypt, and flourished: prosperous and strong!

    Joseph’s dying words point to another time, sometime in the future, when the people of Israel would return to their Palestinian homeland -- to the land of Canaan that they had abandonded -- and he didn’t want to be left behind. “God will surely come to you,” said Joseph, “and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, and to Isaac, and to Jacob.” So Joseph made the Israelites swear, saying: “When God comes to you, you shall carry up my bones from here.”

    Joseph died, being 110 years old. He was embalmed, and placed in a coffin in Egypt. (Genesis 50:26) His bones would have to wait for Moses!

    The problem with a government land grant (like the one the Hebrews had in Goshen) from a King like Pharaoh, is that it could be rescinded at any time by a different decree. Not unlike the “American Indian treaties” that our own government agreed to in the 1800’s, and then broke by 1900.

    That’s where the Book of the Exodus begins... A new Pharaoh takes over -- one who didn’t owe Joseph any favors.

    The King sees all his Egyptian subjects paying tribute to him, and the Israelites are exempt! (What’s up with that!?)   He owns all their farmland and all their assets, but Israel lives in the best location as though they owed him nothing. His own people work hard on his building projects, and they pay 20% taxes on everything they earn, while the Hebrew people just keep multiplying like jackrabbits! This doesn’t seem fair to the Egyptians, and it doesn’t make sense to this new Pharaoh, so he simply closes their loophole.

    It reminds me of when the new President had been elected, but the old one was still in office until January 20. “We only have one President” said Senator Obama, as he let George Bush have his way as the ultimate decider. But after the Inauguration, when conservative commentators became distressed about the overwhelming Democrat majority in both Houses of Congress plus the Administration, and decried what they called the new “Socialism,” we were reminded by Mr. Obama that we still only have one President, and there are consequences for having won the election! The new Administration would set new policies – get used to it! Their Justice Department would pursue only the lawsuits that suited it & dismiss others.

    It was worse in Egypt when the new Pharaoh came into power, because (unlike the President) the King was the absolute reigning power -- omnipotent, all-powerful -- a tyrant who could decree anything he chose! And he had the armies and the slave taskmasters to back it up. Pharaoh rescinded the citizenship rights of the Hebrews; dis-possessed them from their land & made them into a lower-class of slave subject to the Egyptians.

Pharaoh sets over them state-appointed   task-masters, who   afflict them with heavy burdens. In an irony of history, they are ordered to build storehouses for grain -- the very tactic that had been the basis of Joseph’s administrative coup… the very thing that was supposed to have been a blessing and relief from God at the end of Genesis -- and to dedicate those storehouses to their slave-master: Pharaoh. The Cities Pithom & Rameses.

This is a “reversal of fortune” that the children of Israel do not like! Once they were in the driver’s seat, once they had the system working to their advantage, they probably had not considered that it would be reversed. And so I say, in my sermon title: Get ready for it! Reversals of fortune are as old as the Bible! And, like a teeter-totter, sometimes you’re in the “up” position, and sometimes you are let “down!” And the “down” is a crash!

    This “reversal of fortune” which causes the children of Israel such pain and dislocation, is a blatant new policy of Pharaoh’s intended to humiliate and eventually to annihilate the immigrant Hebrew people from Egypt (after almost 400 years of their living in Northern Africa in peace).
    When the harsh treatment of the Hebrew people (and let me mention that the Biblical word for Hebrew -- “ivree” -- actually means “slave”) didn’t weaken them, but only strengthened them, King Pharaoh got scared.

He must have realized that when conditions get revolting enough, people revolt! We saw it in the Soviet bloc in the late 1980’s; we’ve seen it just this year in Tunesia & Egypt, Bahrain & Libya. People rise up & rebel!

Pharaoh was worried that the numerous Hebrew slaves might switch sides, and go over to assist some “Enemies of Egypt” -- especially now that they no longer have anything to lose, except their powerless poverty!

    So Pharaoh sets the stage for the very thing he fears most – that he will be confronted by a Greater King than himself, one that will take the side of the slaves -- by issuing a death decree, a heartless and ruthless order that goes down in history as one of the most intolerably bloody: “Kill the Hebrew Boys!” Kill the babies in the slave families. Kill only the boys.

It was probably announced by his court officials, it may have even been posted in patriotic colors in all the shops and sanctuaries: “Kill the children of Israel!” A most hateful crime made into law! Unsurpassed in its evil, I would say... until King Herod did the same thing in Bethlehem in his effort to kill the Baby Jesus! (I wonder if Herod even knew that he was paralleling King Pharaoh of old?) I wonder, too, if the Nazi killing machines in Germany & Poland & Austria, who sent their Jewish citizens to places like Auschwitz & Dachau realized that they were implementing the same hateful decree in the 20th Century A.D. that Pharaoh had ordered 20 Centuries B.C!?

    It is on this brutal stage that the drama of Israel’s “liberation” takes place. We’ll look at it in detail next week: these women Shifra & Puah. Will they, and countless other lower-class subject people, be able to bring about a “reversal of fortune” yet once more? Overthrowing the relentless, oppressive, brutally violent tyranny of Pharaoh to become free people?

These memories – of oppression and slavery, and God’s subsequent efforts to free them – moreso than all the more successful Patriarchs & Matriarchs of Genesis that went before, are Israel’s most formative faith-story: the Exodus from genocidal slavery… and the subsequent establishment of a new nation under God’s direction & God’s Law. The Kingdom of God coming out from captivity in the Kingdom of Pharaoh.

    The Exodus is a story in which God works in unexpected ways to bring life and healing, freedom & wholeness to a broken and oppressed people. It is a story which (as we will see over the next few Sundays) will include burning bushes, miracle working, and seas-parting. But first, before the great man Moses can set the slaves free, a baby Moses must be born... and he must survive. The Exodus begins with a story about women and infants, a story featuring midwives and mothers and daughters… who are about to turn Pharaoh’s world upside down. I hope you’ll come next week to hear the whole story.

    For today, let me just say: reversals of fortune happen. To be wise, we ought to be on the look-out for it, and we should also be ready for it.

If we’re the “underdog” just now, let’s put our heads together (like Joseph did in Genesis) and like Shifra & Puah are about to do (in Exodus) to turn it around. It’s never to late to make a change for the better!

And if we’re on top, let’s look where our advantages are setting someone else at a dis-advantage, and ameliorate the damage before resistance, resentment, and rebellion begin to brew. Forewarned is forearmed.
Amen.

Ashes: Symbol of Suffering, Sorrow, & Solidarity (a sermon based on Hebrews 11:23-29)

2011-03-09T10:55:00.000-08:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

Ash Wednesday, March 9, 2011

    Have you ever sat in ashes? Smelled the smoke, felt the grit? Many of my books still have shadowed edges from the smoky soot of a church fire in Long Beach twenty years ago. Where there are ashes, there had to be a fire. Even though Southern California has an almost annual “fire season” (when we watch the drama of firefighters & flames in Malibu or up in Crestline, down in San Diego or over in La Habra Heights), it is relatively rare, thank God, to lose one’s home or one’s business in a fire. But that’s the origin of “sitting in ashes” -- a home has gone up in smoke.

    When Patty & I lived on a farm on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia, 30 years ago, a “controlled burn” of a harvested field was blown out of control. It entered the woods. We called the fire department and, working alongside them, Patty & I (and my brother Ralph, who happened to be visiting at the time) discovered first-hand how hard it is to contain a spreading fire. It was weary work... dirty... hard! ( Ask Ken Sams, Jr.)

    Fires often follow an earthquake -- due to collapsed buildings and ruptured gas lines. Even though Patty & I each served 4 years in the Army, we have been spared experiencing the ashes of war; but (like you) we’ve seen them on TV. Back in April of 1992, from our upstairs window in Signal Hill, Patty & I saw fifteen fires burning in the night sky because of the riots following the Rodney King verdict. We routinely sweep ashes from our driveway from the refineries burning to the West of us in Wrigley.

    Is it any wonder that ashes are our most ancient symbol of sorrow… of suffering a tragic loss?
Two weeks ago, a North Hollywood firefighter died when the ceiling collapsed in the house-fire he was fighting. Whether caused by an act of nature, by accident, or by purposeful pillaging, the terror of fire gives way to the lingering sorrow of ashes. Sitting in the ruins of what once was a home. “Sitting in ashes...”

    A second layer of symbolism attaches to ashes in the burial customs of most ancient cultures. Generally, only the rich were embalmed; only the powerful built tombs. Casket burial (as we do it here in America) was possible under some weather and soil conditions. But far more frequent in cultures around the world is the funeral “pyre.” The burning of the dead body (cremation) has always been available (e.g., Gandhi, Viking rafts).

In fact, the general rule in Israel in ancient days (if you were not wealthy enough to get a burial plot on the Eastern side of Jerusalem) was to take the dead body to the Gihon River Valley and burn it with the trash. That’s where the Biblical name for the place of the dead “Gehenna” comes from, and the familiar image of the “fire that never goes out.” It’s not Hell (the Nordic place of the dead), it’s not Hades (the Greek place of the dead). It’s Gehenna the pit where the body is laid & the fire consumes.

The ashes of sorrow, the ashes of loss, the ashes of death.

    “Remember that you are dust,” God tells Adam in the Garden of Eden, “and to dust you shall return.”

At graveside ceremonies, I usually say: “We commit the remains of our beloved to the ground -- ashes to ashes, dust to dust -- yet with the sure and certain promise of resurrection to new life.” Dust & ashes.

    For thousands of years, experiences with ashes have been associated with traumatic loss, with death, the end of what used to be. And so, it is no surprise that the Hebrew Bible (as it devised its liturgical rituals) uses the action of covering oneself in ashes (or sitting in ashes) as a public symbol of grief & mourning. It is a reminder of one’s own mortality... reducing oneself to ashes and to dust. A symbol of utter humility; sorrow.
    To wear sack-cloth and sit in ashes was the normal way of showing “repentance in” Jesus’ day. Sack-cloth is rough burlap. Only the poorest of the poor, lepers & destitute beggars, would wear harsh jute; most folks could afford flax or simple linen. Mahatma Gandhi, in his effort to show solidarity with the lower classes in India, wore native cotton. Cotton, wool, linen, or flax was fairly comfortable. Burlap bags are rough!

    When the King of Nineveh wanted to show the prophet Jonah that he had believed the prophet’s warning, and that he had repented of his violence, he ordered all inhabitants of Assyria to wear sackcloth and to put ashes on their head. Arab Moslems picked up the same ritual in the Koran.

    Tonight I have brought some “sack-cloth” for you to feel. And I’ve brought ashes to mark our foreheads. To do it right, we should be wearing the burlap bag and scooping the ashes onto our heads. But we’ll not do so.

    Pope Gregory, in the 5th Century, re-formed the liturgies, the calendar, and the music of the Roman Church. He drew upon this ancient custom of putting ashes on one’s head to denote humility, mortality, repentance, sorrow... He called for all churches to begin “Lent” with a service on Wednesday night that used ashes as a sign of our repentance & sorrow, our solidarity with those who suffer, and our “penitent” humility.

    Since the the imposition of ashes has been used since medieval times to designate the start of the season of Lent (the 40 days which lead us to Holy Week and Easter), we call this day “Ash Wednesday.”

    The number 40 (as in the “40 days of Lent”) is also symbolic. Moses, you may recall, spent 40 days on the mountains of Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments (the Hebrew Torah, or Jewish Law) before he came back down the mountain with the two stone tablets. The freed slaves then spent 40 years wandering in the Arabian desert, learning those Laws, before they were ready to enter Palestine (the Promised Land). It is their story – the Exodus – that we will recall during these six weeks of Lent.

    The number 40 has more significance to us as Christians by reminding us of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness (following his baptism by John in the Jordan) sorting out what kind of Messiah he was going to be... 40 days in which he was tempted by Satan to follow one of the three “popular” paths of gaining power: namely, through (1) economic security (give them bread!), (2) by political conquest (in other words: rule the nations, take the Throne of David and govern with police powers and taxation and military), or (3) by religious spectacle (descend on angel’s wings into the Temple and claim your divinity by doing miracles). I preached on those themes last year, so I assume we already know all that.

    This year I have decided to look at the roots of the “40-day” Lenten tradition from its Exodus parallel because that’s how the people in Jesus’ own day would have interpreted his ministry. He was the prophet “like unto Moses” who had long been promised to come as a new law-giver.

    Since we are approaching Lent in solidarity with Moses -- which means focusing on the liberation of the slaves from Egypt -- our stories during worship these next six weeks will remember their suffering (instead of Jesus’ own). The “Exodus” story leads naturally to Passover, the night of Jesus’ Last Supper and subsequent death on a cross. We will commemorate that (here at Los Altos United Church) with a Maundy Thursday service on April 21, which will be a reenactment of a Jewish “seder” supper (led by Pam Watson, with all the symbolic foods and readings of a family Haggadah/Passover). It is my hope that our reflections on the Exodus story enhances our understanding of Jesus’ ministry.

    To that end, I introduce you (tonight) to a new Ash Wednesday symbol -- the pretzel! (“Broetsel” -- or “little bread” -- as it is called by the people along the Danube & Rhine Rivers, who invented them.)

    When the slaves fled Egypt, they had no time to bake bread with yeast, so they only ate “unleavened” bread. In the medieval church (mimicking the Passover rituals), Christians were told not to use any yeast during Lent. Pretzel-dough not only has no yeast, it uses no “dairy” products, either, which -- along with eggs -- were “forbidden” during Lent.
Some folks choose to give up chocolate; some folks give up eating meat for Lent. Everyone had to forego eggs & yeast in olden days! As Evangelical & Reformed churches (such as our UCC Protestant ancestors) broke away from the Roman rituals in the 16th & 17th Centuries, some of these local customs continued. Not eating eggs until Easter morning, for example, gave rise to our “Easter egg” hunts. English “hot crossed buns,” and German “pretzels” bent in the shape of praying hands, are remnants of those rituals.

    As you enjoy your pretzels this evening, please take note also the salt... for in the Passover ritual, salt is used to remind us of the sweat of the slaves forced labor, and the tears of their sorrow.

    Lent is a time when we should look within ourselves, to see what needs changing and what needs healing, as we seek to follow Jesus more completely -- more willingly, more passionately and compassionately.

    In Bible times, when people suffered, or were in sorrow, or when they had sinned and were sorry, they would wear sackcloth and put ashes on their head as symbols of their grief and regret. Tonight, we (too) will use the symbols of rough sackcloth and ashes, to express our solidarity with those who suffer (those who suffered in the past and those who are suffering now in the present) and to express our own sadness about continuing patterns of injustice and sin.

    The rough sack-cloth connects us to those in poverty and in pain. Native burlap connects us to plants and to things of the earth. It rubs… wear it long, and it rubs our senses sore! The ashes remind us that we are mortal -- creatures of earth -- prone to grief and loss. The ashes also remind us of fires that restore the earth, returning nutrients to the soil, from which new plants will grow and more abundant life eventually comes.

    And so, we join together in this Lenten season to hear the story of suffering slavery and the sorrows brought on by sin. Together we seek God’s forgiveness, and commit ourselves to liberation and new life.

Amen.

What More Was There to Do? (a sermon based on Isaiah 5:1-7)

2011-03-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

March 6, 2011

     Isaiah begins today’s text with these words: “Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill…”

I was struck with the three-fold iteration of love: “my beloved… my love song… my be-loved.” Such an emphasis on love (“beloved”!) is remarkable in a single line of scripture. The relationship that Isaiah feels, and the love of the One about whom he sings, should color this text with tenderness.

    Back in 1985, when I first preached on this text, I was a Pastor in Dowagiac, Michigan, and I had a large grape-growing farm family in my church. They contracted their annual harvest to Welch’s Grape Juice. I knew that they would feel deeply the “relevance” of the metaphor that Isaiah was using.
So, I wanted to at least capture some of the love and tenderness Isaiah intended so as not to come across quite as “preachy” or “threatening” as the text might be.

    So, since Isaiah calls it a “love song,” I figured it needed to be put to music and sung. So, I wrote the following: “Vineyard Love Song”

    Chorus: Let me sing a love song about a vineyard fine.
High on a fertile hillside, it’s all mine!
Judge, what should I do, for now that the harvest’s through:
the hill has all run wild with sour vines!

    Verse 1) That hill has the finest soil, rich black dirt to dig in.
        Cleared of all its stones, used to build a wall.
        Only the best of vines were planted on the inside.
        So, I don’t see how the sour grapes got in.
                (repeat chorus)

    Verse 2) Right in the middle square, I built a high watchtower.
        Dug a solid vat for to press the wine.
        Tended and trimmed the branches. I didn’t take no chances!
        But somewhere under summer’s sun, it all went bad!
                (repeat chorus)

    Verse 3) O children of God, you great men of Judea:
        Judge, I pray you: judge between the grapes and me.
        What more was there to do than has been done for you?
        So, why, instead of great fat grapes is your fruit so poor?

    Second Chorus) Let me sing a love song to the Vineyard of the Lord
        For we’re His pleasant planting, with good in store.
        He comes to harvest justice, but all He finds is war,
        And instead of righteousness, He reaps a sword!

    Verse 4) I tell you what I’ll do to you, my beloved Vineyard:
        I’ll pull up your hedge and urge the sheep to graze.
        Your tower and your wall, I will make them fall.
        And I’ll use the broken stones to pave my way.

    Verse 5) No more shall the ground be hoed; let thorns take you over.
        Branches pruned no more, let the briers grow!
        Well-water I have brought, and rain-fall I have caught,
        Shall no more be wasted watering you!

    Final Chorus) Let me sing a love song to the Vineyard of the Lord
        For we’re His pleasant planting, with good in store.
        He comes to harvest justice, but all He finds is war,
        And instead of righteousness, He reaps a sword! (P.A.L.© 1985)

What Isaiah described in his love-song could be, perhaps, the first “farm foreclosure” in recorded history. If the fruit stops growing on the vine, despite all the farmer’s efforts – or, if the branches run wild from the vine, yielding wild grapes (or sour grapes, or rotten grapes) – the farmer has no other choice but to seek some other use for those resources: the farm-land, the rocks, the water.

The vineyard owner asks the people of Judea to judge the situation. What more was there to do on the beloved vineyard’s behalf that the gardener had not already done?

“When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?”

Let’s review quickly what all had been done to assure a flourishing crop: the vineyard had been well-placed, on a sunny slope with fertile soil. The owner had worked the soil, hoeing it to turn the earth over, pulling the weeds and native grasses, removing the briers and thorn-bushes, and clearing it of rocks. With the rocks, he built a wall to keep grazing herds out and a watchtower -- a lookout for foraging animals, or to be able to see from above where more water was needed.

Having chosen such a select site, Isaiah’s beloved friend had every right to expect that the vines (hand-selected choice vines) would produce only the best of grapes.

And, wait, there’s more!

The owner “hewed out a wine vat” in it.

In the usually stony and largely desert ground of Palestine, the owner not only prepared the ground by removing the stones, he actually dug into the hard ground (one translator says he “hacked” into the bedrock and made a “trench” for the wine). In any case, what Isaiah is indicating is that this was laborious, difficult work.

The Arabs have a proverb to the effect that when God created the world, an angel flew over it carrying a bag of stones under each arm. As the angel flew over Palestine, one bag broke, so that half of all the stones in the world are in the Holy Land! Anyone who has visited Israel or Palestine realizes what a labor of love it must have been for a farmer, first, to clear the land of stones, and second, to dig a wine-press and “hew a vat” in the stony ground.

This unusually arduous task was in preparation for the using of the grapes.

Instead of transporting the fruit somewhere else to be crushed and its juice collected, the Vineyard Owner has dug a higher area on the hillside where the grapes would be pressed (or, more likely, trampled upon) and a trench or trough that would guide the juice into the “wine vat” at the lower edge of the vineyard. Isaiah’s Friend had prepared his beloved Vine-yard with the best, choice vines -- had spared no effort, spared no expense -- had done every-thing possible to accomplish the task of bring-ing forth good grapes. “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?”

Up to this point, the stress has been upon the activity of the Owner. God had “chosen” Israel from among the nations “to be a blessing.”   Remember the original call of God to Abraham to “go from your country and your kin-folk, to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing… and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

God had “chosen” and planted the people of Israel and Judah to produce righteousness & blessing. This choice was a matter of God’s grace, not earned or deserved by the people themselves. In fact, when their hubris made them think that God had chosen them because they were “better” than others, Moses said this:
“You are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be His people, His treasured possession. It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord has set his heart on you and chose you – for you were the fewest of all people! It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors.”

        (Deuteronomy 7:6-8) Moses then tells them: “Know that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to occupy because of your righteousness; for you are a stubborn people!” (Deut. 9:6) “You have been rebellious against the Lord as long as He has known you!” (Deut. 9:24) “So, now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? …

“Only to respect the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God for your own well-being.” (Deut. 10:12-13) So, if God is the Vineyard planter, and Israel/Judah is the Vineyard, what God wants from them is respect, obedience, loving God, and serving one another wholeheartedly.

    The choice of Abraham and of Israel was a matter of pure grace on the part of a loving and merciful God. Over the generations, God has showered them with abundant blessings, including such leaders as Moses & King David and the Prophets. God has clearly and consistently made God’s ways and desires known. No one can say that “they didn’t know” that God wants goodness, righteousness, justice, mercy and love, extending blessings to all people. They knew what God’s will intended for the world!

    In calm, hopeful, patient, nurturing activity the beloved Vineyard Owner has waited…
… anticipating -- as He (or She) watched the vines grow and the branches branch out and the grapes begin to bud and the fruit to mature -- that they would yield a “bumper crop” of good grapes. That the people would be a blessing to all the world, and a joy to God’s own heart! After all the labor that has been expended, such an expectation was justified. What else -- what more -- was there to do?

    He looked for an abundant vintage yield of grapes, but for all His pains… He got junk food! The sad result of the Owner’s labors were grapes that were un-usable. They were bad; they were offensive. They were rotten, wild, and poor. The Arabs speak of grapes that are unfit to be eaten as “wolf grapes” -- wild, violent, distasteful as a canine predator!

After having been chosen… and nurtured… and blessed by God -- through God’s wondrous grace and active intervention -- Israel/Judah has shown itself to be worthless and fit only to be cast out!
Unfortunately, in world history, Isaiah’s words were followed by the Babylonian Captivity as the remnant of Israel/Judah went into Exile & once again into slavery.

    I can image that Isaiah gained a listening audience when he said he was going to sing a “love” song. He assumes the role of a folk singer with a ballad. With the three-fold underscoring of “love” and “beloved” in the first verse, the people probably thought it was truly going to be a love song.

But midway through it becomes a lament, like someone singing the “blues.” And that soon gives way to an explanation and a de-nunciation! I imagine the same way that the Vineyard disappointed the Lord, Isaiah’s “love song” disappointed his listeners!

    The Prophet quickly makes it clear that the beloved friend (about whom he sings) is God, the Lord of Israel & Judah.

And Isaiah says that his audience is, in fact, the Vineyard of the Lord. The people in Jerusalem – the great men of Judea – are God’s pleasant planting, with only good in store from God’s perspective. They were in need of special care by God in as much as they were surrounded by nations that knew nothing of God’s love & justice, nothing of faith & mutual service.

    But Israel and Judah had failed in their basic purpose: namely, to express justice and righteousness in their society, their economy, their relationships & actions -- to do what we pray for every Sunday in worship: that God’s Kingdom come, and that God’s will be done “on earth, as it is in heaven.”

If Israel and Judah failed to exhibit God’s ways (& God’s will) in Isaiah’s day, what’s to keep the Church from similarly failing to show forth God’s ways (& God’s will) in our own day?

    Isaiah, speaking now on behalf of the Owner of the Vineyard, proceeds to set the case before his listeners, and then asks them to pass judgment upon the situation.

    Yes, the guilty people of Judah are them-selves called upon to pass judgment: “Inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.”

I suppose Jerusalem is mentioned first because they were the Capital City… where the King and the Temple and the more elite urban families resided. And the injustices -- wicked-ness, violence, and corruption -- about which Isaiah complains were more concentrated among these “movers and shakers” who set the tone for their economy and society.

It would be like speaking to Congress, or the President, or the nine in black robes who decide cases for the United States.

    But the rest of the people of Judah were also addressed, whether they lived in the City or elsewhere, because they acquiesced in the patterns of injustice set by their civic leaders in matters of politics, economics, & religion. It’s no excuse to say “but everybody’s doing it!” or “that’s what our leaders expect of us.”

The Owner of the Vineyard has the right to ask the listeners, who claim to be the Lord’s Vineyard (as I pointed out to the kids) -- who claim to be acting in God’s name and on behalf of the people -- ask them to judge themselves! This is a duty from which God’s followers cannot escape: we are expected to judge ourselves by the standard set by God, who has no other motive but the “well-being” of the world (that God loves) and the “flourishing” of all its inhabitants.

    What God asks, in this parable of the vineyard, is for us to make a decision, to pronounce a verdict on the rightness of the case as presented.
While this is one of the earliest examples of using a “parable” in the Bible -- which is a technique Jesus used many times over and over in his teaching ministry -- the people of Jerusalem had a well-known earlier example that could help them understand what Isaiah is asking them to do.

    Perhaps you remember the story when the prophet Nathan came to King David in the wake of his affair with Bathsheba, and recited a parable about a man’s only lamb, a beloved pet, who was taken by a rich man -- who had hundreds of sheep of his own! -- to slaughter it and feed it to his friends.

What should be done, asked the prophet Nathan, to the heartless rich man who took for himself the poor man’s only consolation? “Off with his head!” Ah, but “King David, you are that man!” said the prophet. You took Bathsheba to be your wife even though you have a whole harem of other women (wives & concubines) and she was the only beloved wife of your servant Uriah, the Hittite. (II Samuel 11)
In passing judgment upon the “rich man” in the parable, David simultaneously pronounced condemnation on himself for his sinful behavior.

When the residents of Jerusalem and the inhabitants of Judea pass judgment on the two questions posed by Isaiah -- (1) Has the Lord done for us, the Vineyard, all that could possibly be done to guarantee a successful outcome? And (2) Did the Vineyard (our society & economy, our political & religious institutions) bring forth the “good fruit” that was expected, or has it “run wild” with wolf-grapes? -- they will be passing judgment and pronouncing a verdict upon themselves.

I have to ask it of us: Do we think that God has done all that should be necessary for the “well-being” of our world -- of these United States -- of our neighborhood, our church, our families, our economy? Is it now in our hands? Is the outcome now something that we must take responsibility for?

Or is there something else that we’re waiting for GOD to do, before we begin living God’s way, doing God’s will on earth (as it is in heaven), pursuing God’s desire for us.

I believe that God has dealt with us in abundant ways -- abundant grace, abundant resources -- and we’ve been blessed with great teachers and leaders in our past, wonderful families and social institutions around us, role models of selfless service and philanthropy. What more was there to do than has been done?

If there is anything more that is necessary before we can get on with it, Isaiah is opening the agenda for suggestions from the floor. And so far as I can tell, he was received with stony silence. Much like Jesus was met with silence when he asked the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law whether or not it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath. When people do not know what to say, it’s not always because they don’t know what the right answer may be; it’s more likely that they don’t want to expose their hypocrisy.
Silence, in many situations, is an admission of guilt. At least David, when confronted by the Prophet Nathan, cried out: “I have sinned against the Lord!” Those people to whom this parable is addressed, say nothing at all… for there is nothing to say. There’s nothing more that God could have done.

Which leads to the second question: So, why? Why… instead of great, fat, grapes is the vineyard’s fruit so poor? Why is it producing rotten stuff : violence and corruption, wild grapes, sour grapes, wolf-grapes?

When God expects good results, why are things so bitter?

God looks for a crop of justice, but sees people murdering each other! Why?

God hopes to harvest kindness, but hears only the moans of victims, cries of the poor, the clash of swords, verbal venom & wrath!

In the same way that God has done everything possible to cause “good grapes” to grow, likewise in dealing with the people of Jerusalem & Judea (as with us!) God has done everything possible to bless the people … so why are we so hurtful and so hurt-filled? Why are we self-centered on our own good and not the common good or our neighbor’s good?

Why are we stuck in such bad habits?

Is it that God is “limited” in Her ability to make things happen? Has God done simply “the best She could” under the circumstances? Poor God… unable to force her wishes to come true; unable to coerce us human-beings to do things Her way. Is that it?

Despite all God’s loving-care, the sad realization is that God failed to convince and persuade appropriate choices among God’s own people for God’s intentions to succeed.

With eager expectation, God had waited and hoped that the nation which had received such blessings over so many generations would bring forth “righteousness” (tze’daqah) in its life, in its society, in its governing & its business. Having been led by God and taught by God, the people are expected to exhibit good judgment and demonstrate justice. But instead of manifest-ing practical (everyday) justice, the people are engaged in bloodshed! They make war.
They crush the poor into the dust!

Tze’daqah indicates a condition of “right-ness” – right with God and right with your neighbors. It is manifest (or revealed) as one expresses oneself in doing those things which are “righteous” – up-building of the community, peace-making in society. A useful list of righteous behavior is in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians (Chapter 5 verse 22): “The fruits of the Spirit of God are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control.” Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a lot of that happening among God’s people!

Since the original intent of the vineyard has been waylaid by the vines and their “rotten produce,” the assets of land and labor, of soil and water and stones, will be “reallocated” for new purposes. The Vineyard Owner decides to go into a different line of work, re-using and “re-cycling” the raw materials, in (what we might call) a “redistribution” of the wealth. (!) Since the people have apparently stood silently -- not saying a word in their defense -- Isaiah has to speak on behalf of God to indicate to his listeners what God’s intentions are. The vineyard, after all, belongs to the Lord, and God can do with it whatever God desires!

God says “I will let the hedge be devoured, and break down the wall of stone.” In other words, the rocks will be used as pavers. Cattle will be allowed to eat the hedge, and then graze among the vines. Open and accessible to any passer-by, sheep and goats will trample the hillside. They’ll eat the native grasses, briars & thorns, which will no longer be weeded out. No more pruning, no more hoeing.
Wild weeds, like mustard, will grow. Rainfall will have to suffice for watering.

The people of Israel and Judah, who had been objects of the Lord’s delight -- whose pleasure was found in tending them, engaging & guiding them, instruct-ing and caring for them -- will be left on their own, just like all the other nations.

In place of God’s provision of abundance & blessing, they will encounter thorn-bushes and briars, invasions by devourers, being trampled underfoot without a watchtower or a wall to protect them. Since they refused to show forth God’s glory, and they seemed to be incapable of holding to God’s will and God’s ways, those sour grapes & bitter fruits would no longer be associated with God’s name.

Friends, if you and I hope to be pleasing to the Lord, producing the “fruits of the Spirit” which are associated with God’s name, we ought to take Isaiah’s love song seriously.
If God is still looking for justice, and what we provide is war -- if our popular image of American Justice relies on coercive police powers, bigger & faster fire-power, ever more penitentiaries, and ever stiffer penalties --watch out! We may be producing the very bloodshed and outcry that Isaiah heard, rather than the righteousness and justice that God desires.

When God looks at us, Los Altos UCC, let’s be sure we’re putting God’s abundant resources to the best possible use: growing more love, more joy, more peace; more patience, kindness, goodness;   more faith, gentleness, & self-control.   I suspect that the great Gardener and Vineyard-Owner God would truly delight in finding a patch of earth where the real fruits of the Spirit of God are flourishing. One acre of good fruit production here is much to be preferred to a whole hillside of grazing land pasture or even a mountain of rock gravel. Let’s do it God’s way!
                                    Amen.

Worn Out, Beat Down, Far from Home… Got Hope? (a sermon based on Isaiah 60:1-6)

2011-02-27T10:49:00.000-08:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

February 27, 2011

    Behind me you can see the U.C.C.'s "50th Anniversary" General Synod banner: "Let it Shine!" We’re an old American institution, we New England Congregationalists, but it’s never too late to "Let it Shine!"   To quote this morning’s Bible text, Isaiah begins with the command: "Arise! Shine! For your light has come!"

    Frankly, those words remind me of when I was a child, and my Mom would come upstairs on a school-day morning, while it was still dark outside, and sing: “Rise and shine, and give God the glory, glory!” Rise and shine! “It’s time to get up, it’s time to get up, it’s time to get up in the morning!” Most of the time I would pull the covers closer around my ears, thinking to myself: “I’ll rise, but I ain’t gonna shine!”

    I wouldn’t be surprised if Isaiah’s call to the people of Judah in his own day garnered just such a reluctant response. We may rise up, but we’re not about to put a shiny face on it. The people faced another day of labor -- hard labor, forced labor -- driven by their captors in Babylon.

    Isaiah’s people had been grabbed up by the Enemy Empire and taken into Exile in a foreign land. They had been defeated in war -- kidnapped by Babylonian soldiers and taken into prison camps hundreds of miles away from Jerusalem -- to work along the Tigris & Euphrates Rivers.

    The remnant refugees from what was formerly independent Israel are far from home – worn-out by hard work, beaten down by their captors… fed strange food, clothed Babylonian style, bombarded by foreign speech!

    If you’ve ever traveled to another country (or even to another part of Los Angeles County), you might know how disoriented they feel. Patty & I lived for two years in Germany and again (after seminary) in Switzerland. Those are fine modern European nation-states, with comfortable lifestyles, but they still come across (at first) like a nation of strangers. Street signs are in a different language, the food is not what we know from home, the money is different – Deutsche Marks, now the “Euro”; Swiss Francs. We had no political influence since we were “Auslander”… and nobody ever explained the cultural “rules” until after you had broken them!

    In Switzerland, for example, where everything runs with Swiss precision, on time and in order… Patty & I put out our household garbage on the curb in black trash-bags right next to our neighbor’s in brown trash bags. (The brown ones cost three or four times more than the cheap black ones, and Patty & I were on a limited budget.) But our trash was left when the others’ were picked up! Nobody told us that the City workers would only collect brown trash bags. We later found out why... The excess cost was because the trash-collection expense was included in the price of the brown bags. Who would have known? Everything was a bit “foreign.”

    When I think of being far from home (as were Isaiah’s people) and unable to get back, I think of our Preschool Director Maria Shrout and her family this past Christmas. She and her husband with their three teenage boys and her Mother-in-law & Father-in-law reserved a time-share in Spain for the week between Christmas and New Years Day. They flew out from LAX on British Air, connecting through London’s Heathrow airport, to get to their final destination in sunny Spain. Except for one thing…

    Their flight was the last one in before Heathrow airport was shut down due to extreme snowstorms. They got out of the airport on the very last bus before London’s public transportation shut down, and fortunately they acquired the last four rooms in a London-area hotel. The ordeal was much more expensive than their already-paid-for time-share in Spain, and the family (of course) had not packed appropriate clothes for snowbound England! To make a long story short, Maria’s family was far from home for the next week, unable to get back, and their week in “exile” cost them $30,000. (If you haven’t heard Maria tell it, be sure to ask!)
    I’m sure the Jewish remnant in exile felt as frustrated as Maria’s family in their inability to get anyone to take their side, to protect them, correct the injustices, take care of their needs in an understanding way. When you’re stuck in a foreign place – far from home – you just want someone who speaks your language, someone who knows you, who loves you, with whom you don’t always have to “translate” what you mean.

    The captives from Jerusalem were getting caught up in the Babylonian rat race! They were tired, and grumpy, and put-upon. They knew they were not the ones in charge! Their God must not have things “under control,” or why would all this bad stuff be happening to them!? Their sons and daughters have been taken from them -- sent elsewhere to work, or to die. The elders know they cannot take care of the people. The leaders know they cannot protect them from the violence of everyday life.

    In Isaiah’s world, the people were simply “on hold” (like Maria’s family marooned in London in the snow). The people were hopeless. For them, there was no “safe” place anymore. They knew they were in trouble, but they felt helpless to change anything. What they wanted was a place where they could hide out -- where they could lock the doors, and lick their wounds, and make the world go away! What they don’t want is a “pep talk” from Isaiah: “Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory!”

    Why not? What’s wrong with a little Good News in the middle of such bleak hopelessness? After all, the Bible is clear: salvation is free. God is with us, to save us! The Good News is free. God’s “grace” is, by definition, free. The “revelation” of who God is -- the light and the glory of God -- is there (says Isaiah) for the asking. That’s the “epiphany” this season is named for: the recognition, the appearance, the revelation of the Savior/Messiah in our midst, to save us and bring us home! So, why don't folks just open their hearts and believe it!? Why don't we receive it?!

Why is it some people will not rejoice when the light dawns in their darkness? Why don’t we all rise up in praise upon discovering that we are loved by God -- embraced by God...?   That we are already forgiven and reconciled -- that we can live in peace, and die in peace, and flourish...
    Why not!?

    Maybe the timing is wrong. Maybe we just can't "feel good" about God right now, because we are in pain. Or because we are "at wit's end" -- plunging around in darkness, devastated, bummed-out, sick; the taxes are due; our family's treating us badly; we’re feeling all alone, lost, weak...

    When the circumstances surrounding us have nothing good for us, then it makes sense to think that God doesn't really like us, either!

    It makes me think of the advice that Job's wife gave him when he was down and out -- that morning when he had lost everything: his wealth, his health, his children, his home... What sensible words of advice did his sweetheart have for him? "Curse God and die!" THAT'S what makes sense! "Curse God, and die!"

    To believe in a good God... To believe that we are freely and joyously reconciled with a God who loves us (who is with us even in our exile, who wants us to flourish) DOESN'T MAKE SENSE when we hurt. We just can't believe it. "Don't turn on the lights, man; just leave the darkness DARK!"

    When we are dulled by grief, and beaten down by frustration, it is easier to refuse the loving care offered by God's gathered community -- easier to ignore promises of newness (reconciliation, reunion, joy & hope) -- than it is to believe that God is actually still at work in us.

    When we are overwhelmed with personal issues, with turmoil in the family and trouble in the news ... When we are tired from our travels and wearied from the physical burdens and emotional pressures we carry ... When we are morally confused about what values deserve our investment and who is really in charge ... That’s when we need Isaiah’s word the most.

    I'm sure you've been there. I know I've been there...

…Times when the frustration, confusion, criticism, darkness or fear, makes us want to lock the door of our hearts to the love that God has for us. Love delivered through caring people -- people like the prophet Isaiah, people like Jesus -- people we sometimes meet in God's Church.

    It's natural to be like that... To want to keep our lives just as dark and cold as the world around us seems to be.

    And yet, to do so is to miss the Messiah (the Savior) who has come. It’s giving in to the darkness, the deep darkness, that shrouds the nations.

    Then again, if you are like me, we may keep the door to our heart closed just because we are too tired to open it. It's not that we are blind to the glory of God & the miracle of Christ's coming into the world, or that we are too mean-spirited and evil to let the light come into our lives... No, we're not blind or evil. We're just too pooped!

    Six day work-weeks burn us out. Self-pity drains our energy. Criticism erodes our confidence. Or, because of personal circumstances and situations that we prefer to keep private, we simply "hurt" so much that we have no "spiritual push" left in us.

    A recent loss -- by death, divorce, unemployment, whatever! -- may make us feel stuck in a void, sucked down into an empty pit where nothing ANYONE can do or say will make us FEEL that life is alright. It happens!

    We've all had those moments -- those weeks! Some of us may be having them right now. If we cannot locate the energy to accept God's presence in OURSELVES -- to accept grace and forgiveness for ourselves -- then we surely cannot feel it for others. Not because we are EVIL, but because we are exhausted.

    Then it is not so much a matter of us CHOOSING not to “open the door” to God's messengers of light and grace and Good News... we simply don't have enough strength to do it. GOD needs to open the door!

    When we pray for a miracle to happen, it does not need to be a major healing, or divine vision, or tremendous event... It may take a miracle just to get us to feel (to truly, deeply feel) that things are ALRIGHT when everything (everything) seems all wrong! By ourselves, we may be too tired to feel it. "Arise? Shine? C’mon, Isaiah. Just leave the darkness DARK!" We’re too tired to turn on the light, and so we sit in the dark.

    When we’re worn out, beat down, fatigued, or failing, it’s natural to want to roll over in bed and cover our ears, cover our eyes, when the alarm goes off: “You’ve got to get up!” It’s natural to be that way, but it’s not faithful. Isaiah is not merely stating a fact, he’s giving an order! “Arise! Shine! Because your light has come!” That light, which is understood as a gift from God, carries with it the power to transform the remnant Israel so that the scattered nation will be restored, and also, as the Jews begin to take on the light of God themselves, those outside of Judea will inevitably be drawn to their light.

    Isaiah is wonderfully and deliberately ambiguous. “Your light has come” clearly means Yahweh/God -- the glow of the Lord’s glory -- which is Israel’s only hope for the future, their only source of possibility for recovery.    Your light has come… (says Isaiah) and yet the outcome of God’s “rising” upon them -- and the glow of God’s “glory” appearing in them -- is that other nations shall come “to your light!” To Israel’s light!

Kings will be drawn (like moths to a flame) to “the brightness of your dawn.” In other words, the light that is intruding into their darkness – the light of God that comes from God – will be seen by the other nations as Israel’s own rising. In the face of gloom and despair, the glory of God brackets, contains, & overwhelms, the darkness everyone else experiences.

You know that life relies on light. You can’t miss a bright shining light, because light is (by its very nature) so visible!   We animals have a sort of photosynthesis in our blood. Constant darkness and shadow, long nights of gloom and chill, would give anyone “cabin fever.” Here in Southern California, there seem to be a lot of sun-worshipers. We like to be warm and tan!
When I lived in Michigan as a teen-ager, where winter could last for seven months (and weeks at a time could go by with nothing but slate-grey days between a very late dawn and an all-too-early night-fall), I told folks that (remember!) I was born in Orange, California… and, as a result, I was solar-powered! Grey days with little light & warmth was a slow death.

    An all-enveloping night, like the empty stretches of space, will not give rise to life. Light is crucial to the very survival of the created order.

You may remember how Jesus once said to his followers that they were “the Light of the World.” Well, a city set on a hill does not need light-hearted light; it needs a dynamo of energy to set it ablaze for all the world to see.

Have you noticed how some folks naturally radiate the warmth and engaging style of “light”? -- light-hearted people, with a light touch, or who strike us like a ray of light in the dark of night. Some folks appear to us as light-bearers, radiant, charismatic, extroverted, visible.

    But there are others who, by temperament, are less visible, less brilliant, much more introverted and perhaps more-easily discouraged.

It is a remarkable testimony to the strength (or stubborness) of this 63-year-old congregation that we draw a dozen youth group members, a half-dozen Bible Study members twice on Tuesdays, a couple dozen officers and choir members together, week after week, when we have, in fact, only 100 members to draw from! Los Altos UCC performs a re-markable amount of activity for so few persons.

    And each of us, truth be told, are just "ordinary folk." Our worship leaders, ushers, Sunday School teachers, outreach & fellowship workers (all of whom are volunteers, who have busy lives outside the church, many of whom have “day jobs” and families to care for), and yet they all put in faithful, long hours of service with the barest minimum of paid staff...

    And it's my hunch that ordinary folk (like us) feel "too tired" a LOT!
    And that’s in addition to worrying about an earthquake like the one that devastated Christ Church New Zealand last week, or weathering a dreadful storm... We’re plenty tired enough apart from those of us suffering from colds, pneumonia, & recurrent worries about cancer, Louise’s broken arm, heart surgery, hip replacement, etc... all those “multiple-service” support roles we try to maintain at church exhaust us. We get the blahs; it happens!

    With all that surrounding us (chilled to the bone & bone-weary), we come to church -- and listen to words from Isaiah, or from Jesus -- words about a grace and light that has come to make life "alright at the core..."

    But we are muzzled by fatigue, shackled by anger, paralyzed by our own very real hurts and losses, such that we cannot find the extra reserve of power to open our lives to the REALITY of that Gospel message -- to the FACT of God's presence in the world, & of God's love in this church!

    Then, as I said a moment ago: it is not so much a matter of us CHOOSING to open the door to God's messengers... we simply don't have the strength to do it. GOD needs to take the initiative, to open the door!

    The surprise is that God DOES open the door – sometimes... The miracle we need DOES HAPPEN, and God offers us the gift of knowing that while things seem to be all wrong around the edges, things are alright at the core. The earthquake happened, but we’re still here. The exile has taken us, but a new future is in the making. Darkness has overwhelmed the nations, yes; but our light has come. “Arise!” says Isaiah: “Shine!”

    In the midst of our frustration and fatigue, an Isaiah-like person announces God’s Good News to us. A Jesus-like person preaches it LOUDLY. And the further surprise is that we, sometimes, accept it.

    Sometimes... someone comes to us with a prayer like Saint Patrick’s, to remind us that with this surrounding shield of God's strong love, we ARE going to be alright! Have faith. Trust God. Arise!

    Isaiah pointed his distressed, dislocated, and defeated population toward the hope of a new future -- a possibility that they could achieve… if they allowed themselves to imagine a better day coming.

He pointed them, as did Jesus a half millennium later, to the basic “epiphany” (the revelation) of the greatest secret in all the world: the Good News that things can be alright at the core, even when it's all wrong around the edges.   For at the center -- where our lives are open to our Creator-God/Redeemer-Christ -- we are held, led, loved, cared for, and inseparably bound into the New Future that God desires for us.

    Whether we are feeling oppressed and hurt this day... worn out, beat down, or far from home… whether we are angry, frustrated, or simply tired... our ''ordinary hearts'' have been offered an extra-ordinary gift: the loving fellowship of God through Christ. This is no small thing!

It's what allows us to be centered and secure in the midst of the storm; to be at peace in our hearts when others are losing their heads all around us. It's wonderfully free, this fellowship with God. God gives it. All we can do is LET GOD give it to US.

Arise! Shine! Your light has come. As Jesus said: a lamp sheds no light if you put it under your bed. So, get it up, friends! Get it out! Hold it high! Not for our glory. Not for Los Altos United Church, but for God !

Shine on!
                    Amen!

They Will Not Hurt or Destroy (a sermon based on Isaiah 11:1-9)

2011-02-13T10:43:00.000-08:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

February 13, 2011

Today’s text from the prophet Isaiah must have burst like the first light of Creation into the darkness and chaos of disorder. The distress that the people were feeling on every side is turned into rejoicing as Isaiah tells of a coming Savior/King, upon whom God’s Spirit would rest: giving him wisdom and understanding, good counsel and strong might, who would find delight in the awesome presence of God.

“With righteousness shall he judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He shall kill the wicked…” and then, finally, peace will reign. “The wolf shall live with the lamb. The leopard shall lie down with the kid.” The calf will not be veal on the lion’s menu anymore! No… “The lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” The bear shall graze like a cow; the lion shall eat straw like an ox. Vegans the lot of them; carnivore, no more! Even the asp and the adder, dangerous deadly snakes, will be playthings for babies. And Isaiah ends his glorious vision of the “peaceable kingdom” that God is preparing for Judah with these words: “They will not hurt, or destroy, on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” Wow, what a world!

Isaiah’s context in history was anything but “peaceable.” As I pointed out last Sunday, Isaiah was preaching in the City of Jerusalem in the post-Civil-war period (in the middle of the Eighth Century BC -- around 722 BC) after the Assyrian Army had utterly destroyed the Ten Tribes of Northern Israel and devastated the lands of Galilee & Samaria. The darkness of despair & defeat, death & destruction, was everywhere.

Of the so-called “children of Israel” (that is, the Twelve Hebrew tribes who had been freed from Egyptian slavery under Moses a thousand years earlier), only Judah was left, with the tribe of Levi working for them as priests and curators of the Temple. All the other descendants of Patriarch Jacob and his four wives had been killed … or were deported as prisoners of war: their families broken up and scattered across the “known world” as forced labor (captive slaves once again) and lost to history forever.

Isaiah’s day was a terribly sad time in Bible history, even though the residents of Jerusalem (the kingdom of Judah) fared quite well for having been allies of the victorious Assyrian Empire. As I said in last Sunday’s sermon, Judean pride had been bruised when the Northern Ten Tribes walked away from any affiliation with Jerusalem; when Israel turned their backs on the monarchy of David’s family, and washed their hands of the Temple’s rites and rituals. I’m sure it felt like Martin Luther’s Protestant attack on the Roman Catholic Church which led to the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago in Europe. The people of Judah wanted their Ten Northern Tribes either back in the fold under Jerusalem’s rule or obliterated. They got the latter: Israel had been destroyed, only Judah remained.

You may be asking yourself, why does Pastor Lance keep coming back to that terrible era in Bible history when the dead were piled up like firewood and the land had been laid waste in war? Aren’t things going along fairly well here in America, and especially among us Christians. What relevance does the ancient warfare between Israel and Judah, and the subsequent disappearance of ¾ of the Hebrew people (ten-twelfths to be exact) have for our fairly comfortable economy and world-wide military superiority? Most of us are living lives that are far removed from the dislocation, the distress, the despair, and the deathly fears of those Jews in Isaiah’s Jerusalem. Why should we take the time, two weeks in a row, to hear of their misery, and their hopes?

First, it’s because these texts are regularly used by Christians to express the messianic hope of a “Savior from God” coming in the most bleak and barren moment in history in order to “set us free.” We see the fulfillment of Isaiah’s vision in Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, these texts (both this week’s and the next – which will be on Feb. 27 – since Pam Watson will bring the sermon next Sunday and she will talk about the religious views of some of our past American President’s wives)… These texts are assigned reading for the lectionary-based church on Christmas Day! Matthew in particular quotes Isaiah’s prophecies about the coming Savior to underscore (and help to “legitimate”) Jesus’ Galilean ministry.

How many of us have not heard these words: “The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, upon them has light shined” (Isa. 9:2) Isaiah said those words specifically about the former lands of Naphtali and Zebulun, which were held in contempt in his own day but whom God would “in latter time” make glorious, the land beyond the Jordan: the Galilee of the nations. (Isa. 9:1) A king would arise from among the defeated and despised – like a shoot of new growth from out of the cut-off stump of Jesse (David’s family blood-line). A new branch would grow from the old roots, long buried. Things looked lost, looked dead, looked like they had been forever cut off… but Isaiah tells the people that life would return… life in a big way, a blessed way, a peaceful & prosperous way!
Isaiah, there in Jerusalem, was speaking of a restored Davidic Monarchy – a Judean king who would take the Throne in Jerusalem… whose coming “in power” would overthrow the reigning Empire, break the yoke of the foreign oppressors: the dominant culture, which did not decide cases based on righteousness, nor take up the grievances of the poor, nor decide with equity on behalf of the “meek” of the earth.

Isaiah points to a coming king who would have the Lord’s own spirit to draw upon: the spirit of wisdom & understanding, of knowledge and respect for God, who would delight in the Lord’s ways and the Lord’s words, and who would be a delight to God in return. All the creatures of earth would see the wisdom of “nonviolence,” and under this new rule of life, all hurting and destroying would be a thing of the past! The earth will be “full of the knowledge of the Lord” like the waters fill up the ocean.

I’m sure Isaiah’s words brought comfort to his people in their war-ravaged territory, hope to those who only saw despair (all the loss and death and grief around them), imagining a new future – a better future – within their own lifetime or at least that of their children and grandchildren. I doubt any of them thought it would be six or seven or even eight centuries off in the distant future!

And yet, that’s our Christian claim. The “Messiah” -- which is a Hebrew word that in English translates “the Anointed One”, or in Greek is called “the Christ” -- was the man Jesus of Nazareth. He wasn’t anointed by holy oil in a ritual in the Temple. He wasn’t coronated as a king. In fact, Jesus showed a strong dis-inclination to reach for power or secular authority. No political power, no economic influence, no desire for religious spectacle temped Jesus. He came in “beneath the radar,” so to speak.

Jesus was a “stealth” Savior: changing peoples lives, changing their minds, changing their hearts, changing their behavior and their values and their willingness to serve others -- yes, even their willingness to suffer, if needs be -- in God’s service, to the up-building of the world… the world that God loves.

This Messiah Savior, promised by Isaiah, would bring about the righteousness and the justice, the peace and the prosperity, that people were hungry for, such that they would gladly make such a one “king.” He would be a holy man, keeping all the kosher and purity rules so as to be ritually sacred. He would slay the wicked and he would strike the earth with thunderous power! He would be a king that other kings must bow down to, all the nations of earth becoming subject to the Jerusalem Throne.

Somehow Jesus was able to be considered the Messiah (Savior, King of Kings & Lord of Lords) without using any of the coercive elements of Messianic expectation. There was no smiting nor slaying nor striking; Jesus displayed none of the accoutrements of royalty or of worldly authority – no armies of heavenly hosts, no cataclysmic in-breaking of divinity, no dramatic thunder and lightning bolts; not even the staccato chatter of automatic weapons or flashes of gunfire in the night as the followers of the Messiah make their way against all odds into the palace & Temple.

The Epiphany of Jesus as the “Messiah”… The revealing of this humble man of Nazareth as the “Anointed One” of God… The appearing of Jesus’ alternative way of living (of relating to God and to one another in society) in the very heart of Judaism… was not expected. In fact, Jesus ran into significant interference, and some downright opposition, from the very people who were most actively hoping for a Savior/King!

Isaiah’s Messiah was going to be called a “wonderful counselor”… but lots of people took offense at what Jesus was teaching. The movers and shakers of Judean society were not about to accept his counsel -- not when it went against their favorite traditions, their Sabbath laws, or their holiness/purity code.

Isaiah’s Messiah was going to display a “Mighty God! An Everlasting Father” … but Jesus turned away from every offer of “power” and went out of his way to bless the poor in spirit and those who mourned, those who worked for peace and those who were hungry. He helped where he could and even picked up a servant’s towel & basin of water and washed his friends’ feet! When he had been arrested, Jesus showed no power, no divinity. He made no appeal to the angels to aid him. He died -- cursed and hanging on a tree -- nothing like a Mighty God at all, not even an Everlasting anything. To the one who was looking for Isaiah’s Messiah to take the Judean throne and to rule in power, vanquishing evil by slaying the wicked, Jesus simply failed.

The only Messianic title that Isaiah used for the coming Savior King that actually fit Jesus of Nazareth was the moniker: Prince of Peace. “Benificient Prince.” Prince of “Shalom” in Hebrew. And “shalom” means not only the refusal of violence and the cessation of war – as it was in Isaiah’s day – it points to a condition of “wholeness”: rich, harmonious, well-being… Hence, the peace and playfulness of the animal kingdom, the overarching sense of a restored Paradise, a new Garden of Eden.

Has that “peaceable kingdom” come? Frankly, it is still an “ideal” future condition, even 20 centuries after the coming of Jesus into the world. So if the first reason to talk about Isaiah’s vision is because these texts are used by Christians to express the messianic hope of a “Savior from God” coming -- and we say that Savior is Jesus -- then the second (more important reason) is to ask ourselves: what it will take to get Isaiah’s vision, which was also Jesus’s vision, more actual -- tangible -- more experiential and not merely “virtual”, not merely an “ideal” but something real?

Righteousness and faithfulness -- integrity, wisdom and understanding, equity when dealing with the meek and showing justice for the poor -- all these traits are indispensable accompaniments to the kind of kingdom Jesus spent his life to bring to our world. We need to keep his agenda always in the forefront of our religious imagination, if we are to take the steps necessary to make Jesus’ “Kingdom of God” our reality.

Amen.

Cease to do Evil, Learn to do Good; Seek Justice, Rescue the Oppressed (a sermon based on Isaiah 1:11-20 and I Corinthians 11:17-34)

2011-02-06T10:37:00.000-08:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

February 6, 2011

    The opening chapter of the Book of Isaiah lays out his vision concerning Judah and the city of Jerusalem in particular. The historical setting was traumatic, post-war. He describes it as follows (in verses 7-8): the land of Israel to the north “lies desolate; its cities burned with fire; aliens devour the land. It is desolate, as over-grown with foreigners. Zion (the hill upon which Jerusalem stands) is left like a booth in a vine-yard” he says, “or a shelter in a cucumber field, a besieged city. If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we would have been like Sodom & Gomorrah.” Those two cities, you may recall, were utterly destroyed in a hail of fire and brimstone back in the Book of Genesis, sunk forever beneath the briny salt-water of the Dead Sea.

    In other words: Jerusalem is on the brink of becoming a heap of ruins, lost forever! All the people of Judah have to do to see their future is look to the North!

The prophet Isaiah stood at the central (or “pivotal”) point between the Bible stories of Genesis and Exodus – that is, between the traditions and laws of Moses (the old ways) – and the coming of Jesus, the Messiah (the new way). The confederation of twelve tribes under a united monarchy (David & Solomon’s family) had broken into two parts: one to the North (Israel) claiming the traditions of the Patriarchs and elders, the other to the South (Judah) trusting military alliances, centralized political rule, and religious consolidation in the Temple with priestly rites, rituals, & festivals.

    Isaiah is very clear about the reason the ten northern tribes of Israel had fallen to the Assyrian armies, obliterated forever from the future history of world civilization.

“Hear O heavens, and listen O earth, for the Lord Yahweh has spoken:
“I reared children, and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. (Isa. 1:2) The ox knows its owner, and the donkey knows its master’s crib;
but Israel does not know me. My people do not understand. (Isa. 1:3)”

Isaiah exercised his prophetic ministry at a time of unique significance in the history of the Jewish people (namely, at the demise of Israel & hegemony of Judah), but his criticism of religious practices and social injustices that he saw going on in his community are just as appropriate to apply in today’s “Christian” context.

    What they’re doing in Jerusalem seems to be religious enough: the people are bringing offerings and tithes into the Temple; they’re performing animal sacrifices and holding solemn assemblies. In other words, they are “doing church” in a big way, there in the Temple, with rivers of oil, clouds of incense smoke, & long, loud prayers.

    But Isaiah says that even with all that formal ritual and religious activity, there is something wrong in their relationship with God.

    “What to me,” asks the Lord God through Isaiah, “is the multitude of your sacrifices? I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams…” says the Lord. “I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats! When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand?” The implication is, that God doesn’t want all these rituals and bloodletting sacrifices; it’s what the priests are asking for!

    Isaiah continues: “Trample my courts no more! Bringing offerings is futile! Incense is an abomination to me! … I cannot endure your solemn assemblies… My soul hates your convocations and your appointed festivals! They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.” If I were a professional priest or prophet there in the Temple, hearing Isaiah’s words – if I were a robed preacher, used to calling the assembly together to worship and thinking it was doing some good in these perilous times (which in fact is what I am!) – I’d be taken aback by Isaiah’s critical statements. Could God truly be upset with us? Burdened & bored, with our worship?

    Isaiah continues: “When you stretch out your hands… I will hide my eyes from you. (!) Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen!” How horrible a thought. God won’t look in our direction?   God will not listen to our plea? (!)

    What can we do? What has gone wrong? How have we so badly missed the point of what God wants from us, that our worship is felt as a burden… a weary one.

    Isaiah tells us in no uncertain terms: “Your hands are full of blood.” Maybe it was all that literal blood of the bulls and the butchered lambs back in Isaiah’s day. I’m glad we’ve cleaned that up in our Christian worship; we only speak figuratively about “blood,” because we all know… it’s really only grape juice in the chalice!

Or, maybe it was all the blood of the war victims, which grieved God’s heart… because they were ALL God’s children – the Israelites in the Northern Ten Tribes, who have been decimated by the century-long Civil War, and Judah’s Assyrian allies who did the deadly deed (and who had been paid off by the Jerusalem princes not to attack them) – were ALL God’s children! Every one of the war dead, whose bodies littered the desolate land… or who were buried with their children in the charred remains of the cities – they were ALL God’s children! Because God was their Creator and Lover of ALL the people, not just the remnant Jews in Judah. God grieved all the deaths and ALL oppressions and all the hardships that war had inflicted on the region!

How can a people make war all week long and then expect worship on the weekend to be alright? Is it any wonder that God turned away; that God refused to listen to their prayers?

“Your hands are full of blood!” says God through Isaiah. “Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes.” Uh-oh! What Isaiah said means that no amount of sacrifice, or of offerings, will “make up” for the people’s complicity in the wrong-doings of their day. Yes, complicity!

The leading citizens of Judah -- the princes of Jerusalem, the political and economic success stories -- knew what they were doing in the social realm… in the deals they struck, and the advantages they took. No amount of incense smoke nor volume of prayers would obfuscate in God’s eyes the injustices they were complicit in.

Making war against the Ten Northern Tribes of Israel had been good for Judean pride (I suppose), which had been bruised when the Northern Ten Tribes walked away from any affiliation with Jerusalem, turned their backs on the monarchy of David’s family line, and washed their hands of the Temple’s rites and rituals. The people of Judah wanted their Ten Tribes to the North either back in the fold under Jerusalem’s rule or obliterated. They got the latter:Israel had been destroyed, only Judah remained.

I suppose some of those worship services that God found burdensome, tedious, were celebrations of their victory over their neighbors. Grateful that they’d won the war & had secured their future as a people (as Jews) – at least until some other Empire arose in another century farther along which would again put them in jeopardy.

The Word of the Lord through Isaiah was as follows: “Wash yourselves.
Make yourselves clean. Remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes.
Cease to do evil. (!) Learn to do good. (!) Seek justice: rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”
Something in the way they had been living, there in Jerusalem, had created more oppression rather than liberation; more pain than blessing. Everyone knows that war tends to create more orphans & widows as collateral damage in everyone’s society.

However, it’s not hopeless, according to Isaiah. If they are willing to “argue it out” with the Lord – focusing on social justice, defining what is evil & what may be an alternative “good”, rescuing what can be redeemed, and stepping in on behalf of the most vulnerable ones – there is a chance that their sins of scarlet will be washed whiter than snow. Forgiveness and mercy is always available from God, if we see the errors of our ways (repent) and ask to be forgiven. That’s the “good news” Isaiah hold out.

Isaiah concludes his primary prophetic statement to God’s beloved children – to God’s beloved, but rebellious children – “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured…” for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. (Isaiah 1:19-20)

Isaiah’s call was to speak directly to the princes of Judah, the elite families, and the rulers in the Temple, to envision a new future through “repentance” (a change of heart, change of direction) and accepting God’s forgiveness. It’s the same basic message Jesus brought some 600 years later; the same theme as our communion meal.

In the text from St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, we heard the familiar words of consecration: “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took a loaf of bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said: “This is my body that is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, he took the cup after supper, saying: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood (poured out for the forgiveness of sin). Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” And the Apostle Paul concluded: “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup in an unworthy manner, will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord.”

A lot of blood has run under the bridge in the twenty centuries that churches have had to debate their doctrines about what constitutes “an unworthy manner” to receive communion. Is it how we serve it, or how old you are when you first get permission to take communion? Is it because you have not yet learned your catechism or not yet prayed the sinner’s prayer? Is it because you don’t belong to that parish, or because there was no priestly/clergy type to consecrate the host? I have no interest in choosing sides among the dozen different understandings of what communion means.

What I am interested in, however, is the social justice critique that the Apostle Paul lays on his Corinthian congregation, much like Isaiah pointed to in his day.
Bishop Yvette Flunder, in the closing worship service of the Earl Lectures in Berkeley last week, used this text for her sermon. And she said that what the Apostle Paul was getting at is that “there is no communion without community. And there is no community where there is no love and respect.” Let me say it again: “There is no communion without community. And there is no community where there is no love and respect.” The ritual of the Lord’s Supper is not a matter of personal piety or an opportunity for private devotion between you and God. It is a social act, a communal activity, and not to recognize that in the Eucharist (which is the official Greek name for holy communion) we are functioning as the Lord’s BODY is the unworthy error.

St. Paul’s criticism began with the observation that “when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you!... and I believe it!” (I Cor. 11:18)

Roman and Greek society was rich with social divisions: citizens had a different status from other civilians, there were slaves and free people, men took precedence over women, Jews were not Greeks, foreigners were alien to local natives, & so forth. But “communion” was supposed to be the one time and place where social “divisions” were obliterated, and all sat together at the Table of the Lord. A.L.L. – bar none!

The Corinthians were using the meal to reinforce their divisions, their social positions and oppressions, their separations, their sex-genders & sexual-affectional orientation, wealthy pulling back from the poor, day-laborers from the elite, and all the other class divisions that lead us even in America to separate networking clusters.

Paul says: “When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s Supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk! … And so you humiliate those who have nothing.” (I Cor. 11:20-22)

Those who had lives of leisure, or who had jobs where they could get off early, or who had no jobs at all, ate the best foods and drank the wine before the day-laborers (who had to work until sundown) arrived at the pot-luck. They may already have been feeling guilty that they didn’t have anything to bring to the communal meal, but when they got to the church, it was too late! Nothing left on the tray but some greasy lettuce where the fried chicken used to be! Nothing but left-overs for the left-outs and losers!

This meal was supposed to be simple bread and wine, where all could meet as one in Christ. Accessible to all – no separations into “cliques” of “like-minded” folks. “Examine yourselves,” writes St. Paul, “and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the Body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.” (I Cor. 11:28-29) Without discerning the “body”…
Now, if you don’t know what the Apostle means when he speaks of discerning “the body” in the communion meal, let me remind you of what he writes in that same letter in the very next chapter: “Just as the (human) body is one and has many members (or parts), and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member, but of many. And if the foot were to say “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body! And if the ear were to say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.” (I Cor. 12:12-13) You get the drift, I’m sure. Discerning who the body really is, is us. We is the body, the whole body, all of us in it together, no divisions. No pulling back from one another in Christ.

Social reconciliation was part of the purpose and the preparation for holy communion: to join in the Body of Christ coming together! (“Jesus people, come together, let your light shine!”) As Yvette Flunder said: there is no communion without community! The whole body, the entire body, the everybody all’yall body!

Bishop Flunder then had us look at St. Paul’s advice in verse 33. She drew our attention to one word, and said that the whole matter revolves around that one word: WAIT. “So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.” Wait until the others get to the table. Wait for all parties & body parts.

We need to take the time to discern who is missing at our table. Who is needed before we can say our Los Altos UCC Church is “whole”?   Last Sunday we had standing-room-only young people: a dozen from First Congregational here in Long Beach, 11 from UCC Riverside, 8 from Tustin/Santa Ana, three from Glendale, one each from Carlsbad and Escondido. All because our YOUTH led a service and were intentional about inviting people like themselves, who are otherwise mostly absent.

But how about people of other races and ethnic origins? How about people with AIDS? You know, the HIV infection crisis is not over, it’s just changed color a bit and changed its continent to Africa. Who is missing from our table? How about all those children in both urban settings like ours and in rural America who are still being “left behind” by an educational system that under serves & drops out so many…

Who is missing, Los Altos UCC? How about those L.G.B.T youth who in great numbers consider teen suicide the only available option to end the anti-gay “belittling” and violence done to their psyches (& sometimes to their bodies) by anti-homosexual bullies who masquerade as spokesmen for Christian Virtue. (Proposition 8 & all that.)
How about our frail elderly? How about the transient homeless vagabonds who drop by the church for a handout, but never come into the sanctuary. Who’s missing, Los Altos UCC? How about those students who live in the CSULB dorms behind us?

My brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. Look around you. Who is here at the table with you? Are we all like-minded, of the same social class, same divisions we mirror in our neighborhood? Who is missing? How about families undergoing divorce just now? Where are the foster children? How about prostitutes, or persons transitioning out of prison? Do we welcome the mentally-challenged, autistic, or hyper-active kids on Ritalin; men with cerebral palsy? Are we taking any action to get to know these people in our day-to-day lives, such that we could invite them to come to worship with us… as our teenagers did to the youth?

In his day, Isaiah was concerned that the people: “Make themselves clean. Remove the evil of their doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil. (!)
Learn to do good. (!) Seek justice: rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

For those who took him seriously, he promised God’s prompt forgiveness. The Apostle Paul says in today’s reading: “If we judge ourselves, we will not be judged.” (I Cor. 11:31) I think that’s good enough reason to take the time to discern who is in our BODY here at church, and who we need to invite, in order that we, too, may “cease to do evil and learn to do good” and in everything to “seek justice.” Amen.

ISAIAH 6:1 - 12 VOCATION: Responding to God’s Call

2011-01-23T15:51:00.000-08:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor

Los Altos United Church of Christ

5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

January 23, 2011

Today’s text from the Prophet Isaiah is the most vivid, detailed, and dramatic account given in the Bible of the “calling” (or “making”) of a prophet: the background motivation for a life of service to God. I would think the only more famous (or more familiar) story of a “call” from God would be Moses’ encounter with the Burning Bush that Charlton Heston made famous in the movie “The Ten Commandments.” Moses will be the focus of our sermons during Lent.

Today, as we continue in the season of Epiphany, we are considering how people recognize God’s presence. This story describes Isaiah’s epiphany -- how God put in an “appearance” (a manifestation) in Isaiah’s day, some 740 years before Christ.

It took place “in the year that King Uzziah died,” giving the historian a pretty clear fix on the date. Isaiah had already begun to serve in the official capacity of a “royal” prophet, or more precisely, a “Temple prophet” in Jerusalem who spoke to the king about matters regarding the people of Judah from the perspective of God’s Law.

The reading of Isaiah’s call gives the impression of an authentic experience… although, because it is told in the “past” tense, the indication is that this story was not composed (and set down in writing) until some time had passed. I would suspect that Isaiah’s subsequent efforts at preaching and prophesying had begun to “color” his remembrance of the original command he received from God to speak God’s word.

Isaiah presents a first-hand, first-person account of the ecstatic vision which initiated his prophetic mission to Judah for the next 45 years! The career of Isaiah, the official Jerusalem prophet (working for the Temple, usually in the Temple, even when addressing the princes and kings), stretched over the period of four kings: King Uzziah (at whose death, Isaiah received his call and commission), and Kings Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Generally the dates of Isaiah’s active career are from 746 BC to 701 BC, that is (as I said) 45 years. The first historical event which Isaiah records (in his 66 chapter book) was the siege of Jerusalem by the Northern Kingdom of Israel in alliance with Damascus, Syria.

Fortunately for the Jews of Judah, that “Civil War” attack by Israel -- its Northern neighbor -- failed. Later, when the Northern Kingdom of Israel rebelled against its Assyrian allies, King Shalmanezzar sent General Sargon to destroy it in 722 BC. Isaiah had a front-row seat not only to the decades-long Civil War between Israel and Judah, he was a witness to (and commentator on) Israel’s subsequent destruction.

Concerned for the fate and the future of Judah, Isaiah was critical of King Hezekiah’s efforts to make various foreign alliances to protect Jerusalem against the Assyrians. Isaiah encouraged the king and the leading families to “trust the Lord” and not to lean so much on their own understandings and not to rely so much on their own strength in arms. You probably have heard Isaiah’s famous plea to the warriors of Judea that their “swords be turned into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.” Isaiah was the primary voice of protest when the Assyrians under Sennacherib laid siege to Jerusalem in the year 701. (We’ll hear that dramatic story in a couple weeks.)

This prophet of Jerusalem, Isaiah, preached his message against the policies of his own king and critical of the character & lifestyle of the nobility for 45 years! It was not just because Isaiah preferred peace-making to military war (which he did), but also because Isaiah’s concept of “God” was broad and deep. God’s demands for ethical living from God’s “children” included all of humanity, so far as Isaiah was concerned, not just the Jews. Every person had the duty toward God of righteousness, because the Holy God (in whose service Isaiah stood) was a Universal Presence, not just a local, tribal God. We heard his words this morning: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of God’s glory” no exceptions!

Human history, according to Isaiah, is the area where God’s holiness works in the actions of people. While all nations of earth are part of God’s world-wide holiness & righteousness, it is the people of Israel and Judah who owe God a special obligation. You see, God had chosen them to be a blessing to all the nations. God had involved God’self in their ancestry and had saved them from slavery in Egypt. God had given them the Law through Moses and had expected them to be obedient. Isaiah opens his book by saying of the Israelites & the Jews: “These children [God] reared and brought up, have rebelled against [the Lord].” (1:2)

In Chapter 5, Isaiah describes the twelve tribes of Israel in a love song, as God’s “vineyard,” carefully prepared and protected. And because Israel had been especially loved (tended, rescued, and nurtured) and the Jews were the first to know God’s Holy ways explicitly through the Commandments of Moses, its failings are especially grievous and its sins deserve greater punishment. Isaiah understands his essential function as a “prophet” to be the voice of God’s rebuke to Israel.

The bulk of his 66-chapter book emphasizes Israel’s relapse from the ways of God to the customs of people who are not led by the Lord. In some cases it has to do with idolatry, following “foreign gods” or simply going along with the religious whims of the powerful elite. But that was not Isaiah’s central message. To him, the chief evidence of Israel’s treachery against the God who had formed them as a people, was not in the field of worship, but in the field of social justice. The injustices that Isaiah denounces (in colorful, memorable language), are primarily behaviors of the upper ruling classes who either ignore or outright oppress the poor by perverting the processes of law: “What does it mean, that you crush my people and grind the faces of the poor?” he asks in chapter 3 (verse 15).

“Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless with equity, and plead for the widow.” (1:17) Isaiah advises the princes of the people: “Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. Learn to do well; seek justice, and relieve the oppressed.” (1:16-17) This is the kind of “everyday justice” that Isaiah demanded from the people. (“Everyday Justice” is the phrase that our youth are using as they discuss Christian ethics and the implications and consequences of their choices and actions. Next Sunday our youth will lead our worship service using that kind of language, so I thought I’d better introduce it to you this morning!) This kind of clarity (& rebuke of the people for not keeping God’s righteousness & morality) fills Isaiah’s 66 chapters.

And even though Isaiah is confident of the correctness of his message, and sure of its timeliness and the thrust of it’s warnings, he is not confident that it will have any lasting effect. The habits of self-serving, of arrogance and evil, are too deeply in-grained, and the “profits” that can be made from injustice and oppression are too precious to be given up. The leading citizens have become too pampered and proud. They’ve got it “made in the shade”! The religious and economic system is working to their advantage, thank you very much!

Isaiah perceives from the very outset that the people who most need to hear his complaint will remain deaf to the preaching of social justice. As he tells it in today’s text, their insensitivity and lack of response to his message was foreseen by God, even as Isaiah was being called to the task.

“Make the heart of this people fat.” God said to Isaiah. “Make their ears heavy with hearing and shut their eyes” (6:10) Just as soon as Isaiah had said: “Here I am; send me!” he heard this: “Keep listening, but do not comprehend! Keep looking, but do not understand. The mind of this people is dull, their ears stopped up, their eyes shut! If they would look with their eyes and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, they would turn and be healed.”

That is (in the words of last Sunday’s sermon): the people would “repent” and be “forgiven.” But, says God to Isaiah, they don’t and so they won’t.

“How long, O Lord?” Isaiah asked God…

And God replied: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitants, houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate… the people have been sent far away, and the emptiness in the midst of the land is vast.” (Oh, great, thought Isaiah… what a job!)

And, of course, God was right. Because Isaiah’s preaching does not penetrate into the conscience of the elders, and the rulers, and the elite families, Isaiah realizes only a national calamity will sufficiently shock them to begin to change their lives.

So, Isaiah became the quintessential prophet of “doom and gloom.” The lovely vineyard of the Lord, he says (which had been planted, and tended, and nurtured with such care for so long), will be laid waste! “I tell you what I will do to my beloved vineyard. I will break down the fence thereof, and allow the sheep to graze. I will tear down the watchtower, and scatter the stones…” (5:5) We will look at that text more closely in a few weeks, but the point is it appears that only the invasion of a more powerful army (presumably “Babylon”) will serve as God’s instrument to correct (and to punish) God’s wayward people. It didn’t have to be that way, if the people of Judah had accepted Isaiah’s warnings… and had changed direction, changed their attitudes, changed their behavior. But God lets Isaiah know from the “get-go” that his words would fall on deaf ears.

Notice: it begins in the Temple. Isaiah’s vision arises during a regular worship service, as he, a professional priest or prophet attending the altar, gets a look “behind the curtain” (so to speak). Such a thing has never happened to me – not even during a hyped-up, peppy Pentecostal preaching service, with Praise Band & amplified singing. And, frankly, I don’t know what a congregation would DO, if God suddenly appeared!

What Isaiah describes is a soul-shaking, almost terrifying, experience of the reality of God, inexpressibly high and exalted, whose holiness and “glory” was so radiant that even the angels attending the Throne hid their faces! Confronted with a vision of God’s grandeur and holiness, so high and lifted up, made Isaiah feel nothing but low… humble and helpless, and less than nothing! He reacts without thinking: “Woe is me! Alas, I am undone! I am as good as dead!”

Now, I can understand that Isaiah fells “blown away” by this vision. Perhaps he is remembering what the priests had been telling the people (since the days of Moses) that “No one can look upon God and live!”

Even Moses -- who caught a glimpse of God’s back-side, the trailing fringe of God’s glory as it disappeared into the thunderclouds on Mount Sinai -- was so affected by the sight that he forever after wore a veil on his face, like Muslim women do under Sharia Law. It was feared that to look at the mere reflection of God’s glory in the face of Moses would put the viewer in jeopardy. “Woe is me!” says Isaiah. “I am undone! For I am a man of unclean lips, who lives among people with unclean lips.”

It seems to me that most folks do not easily expose to others the most “sacred” moments of their lives, even when the encounter with the Holy Divine is as indelibly vivid as Isaiah’s. Especially so, when the details are so un-worldly, extra-terrestrial, super-natural, and incomprehensible as Isaiah’s vision in the Temple. We might be concerned that they think us “crazy” -- wildly imaginative -- & not take us seriously.

Maybe that’s why Isaiah waited until the sixth chapter of his book to tell of his initial “call” into prophetic ministry. He wanted to be sure the significance of his social critique and religious commentary was taken seriously by his audience. He didn’t want the surreal mystery of his direct experience of God to under-cut his test-imony… simply because other people had not had a life-changing encounter like his.

You get the sense, as he tells it, that Isaiah was alone with God in his vision – that none of the other worshipers were even aware of it! The earthly scene faded and the sound of the congregation singing died away, as the smoke rising from the altar in the Temple became an “incense” cloud… revealing the Divinity who was present.

Isaiah is quite detailed in recounting the setting: the angels (called seraphs, or seraphim in Hebrew, distinguishing them as “burning ones” from “cherubim/cherubs” who are “living beings” who serve God in heaven); the hot coal or stone taken from the altar by a pair of tongs; the content of the commission from God, and his response. But Isaiah is circumspect about describing the “Holy One” on the lofty Throne. All he tells us is about God’s garment: the hem of the robe which filled the Temple. But even that “little” exposure was enough for Isaiah to become tongue-tied -- feeling like a “sin-stained” dwarf at a loss for words in the presence of such radiance of holiness and purity. “Woe is me! I am lost!” … “And yet, mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord! My eyes have seen the King… the Lord of hosts!”

I would like to propose that this overwhelming sense of UN-worthiness was the first step in the making of a prophet, a true servant of God. His reluctance to see himself as worthy of God’s attention -- let alone to be put into God’s service, to be “authorized” to bring the Word of God to the people -- is echoed in many other famous occasions. For example, Jonah was a very reluctant prophet! He headed out to sea to run away from God’s calling, rather than go inland to Assyrian Nineveh.

Moses (you may recall) answered back to the Burning Bush: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the people out of slavery?” He even went so far as to propose to God that his older brother “Aaron” (or his older sister “Miriam”) might be better suited for the task, since Moses stuttered and stammered and got tongue-tied too often. Surely Aaron would make a better Priest and Miriam a better prophetess!

Well, Isaiah’s confession of his unworthiness and sense of sinfulness is hardly even uttered before “forgiveness” is on its way! Forgiveness that has not even been asked for by Isaiah! His sense of “wrongness” receives a free gift of Grace from God in a purifying flame of forgiveness that cauterizes the wound of sin and makes whole again that which was broken, cleansed that which had been impure. That’s God’s gift!

The recognition by Isaiah of his need brings immediate repair by God’s grace… unearned, undeserved, not even requested! The “refiner’s fire” consumes the dross while purifying Isaiah’s essential heart of gold. And we’ve all got one… as he did!

So, if the first step in responding to God’s “call” is to recognize one’s own shortcomings, and the way those habits of heart are reflections of the social setting in which we find ourselves – “I am a man of unclean lips who lives among a people of unclean lips” – then the second step is to receive God’s forgiveness.

I believe that Isaiah was able to speak to the people about their sins and shortcomings -- the errors and injustices of their society as well as individual sins -- because he first admitted… and redressed… his own. His own! As Jesus put it seven centuries later: “Take care of the log that’s in your own eye, before trying to point out the splinter that’s in the eye of your neighbor.” In other words: deal with your own sin before preaching at others about theirs! (If we’d do that, we’d change the world!)

No matter how clearly and passionately Isaiah pointed to the failings, faults, and falsehoods of others, he knew from first-hand experience that denunciation and word of judgment would always and immediately be matched by an unequivocal assurance of Divine Mercy… which would bring hope and the possibility of change to light. It’s very simply the process of “repentance” followed by forgiveness of sin.

Isaiah could “talk the talk” because he had “walked the walk”! Let me make it perfectly clear: there is no grace, no gospel, no good news in denunciation! Thunder and lightning do not cause growth; the terror of judgment (“fear” of the Lord) does not lead to a relationship of love and grace, goodness, guidance or trust. It is only the reassurance of forgiveness, of divine mercy, the “clearing of the slate” that brings hope and health and a future dedicated to the betterment of oneself and one’s society.

Well, I’ve spent all this sermon time getting you acquainted with Isaiah and his dramatic “epiphany,” such that there is little time to apply his story to yours or mine. The key question is: have you ever felt God’s “call” in your life?

Now, I realize that the “call of God” is language we usually reserve for ministry. For example, I felt God’s call in junior high school! And that sense of “call” was re-iterated in experiences I had in my church youth group (as I served as “faith commis-sioner” leading group devotions and various Bible studies). My sense of call by God was deepened in my years abroad, as I met wonderful German people… but all of whom had intentionally stepped away from anything having to do with “Church,” setting all “God-Talk” (theology) aside as superstitious Kinderglaube (childish belief).

When I returned to Michigan, and went to college, I joined a Gospel Band. We called ourselves “The Second Coming” and I got accustomed to going out into the community: giving “testimony” about how meaningful a relationship with God could be, through repentance & forgiveness, & the grace & gift of Jesus Christ to the world.

You could say, I had a typical sense of “vocation” – of God’s call and claim on my life; & my subsequent commitment to live it expressly in a public church ministry.

But the word call/calling (“voce” in Latin from which we get the word “voice”) refers to any “vocation.” We evoke, we provoke, we give voice to our deepest calling.

I don’t think that one’s “call by God” should be limited to church professions or missionaries. I believe that any person who resolves the question: “what should I do with my life?” especially in the productive years (those 45 years of adult responsibil-ity between adolescence and retirement) should be able to say that their “vocation” – their chosen work, into which they’ve dedicated years of training and a passion for excellence – is how they have “answered God’s call” to them.

There may be no “visions” like Isaiah’s -- no mid-life correction of course like the Apostle Paul, no burning bush like Moses, no angel visitor like Mary & Joseph, no supernatural dream like Jacob’s Ladder -- that diverts one from a former direction into an entirely new channel of endeavor. But it’s a “vocation” (a responding to God’s call in your life) that helps bring “focus” to a decision… a growing awareness of what gives you “pleasure” in life, what seems to draw your interest and bring out your best efforts. “Vocation” is a sense of what one may be able to do, and what one ought to do with one’s life, for the good of oneself & of society. That’s responding to God’s call!

God gives each of us different gifts -- different interests, temperaments, talents, capacities -- and the secret to a “meaningful” life, a good life, is to follow YOUR bliss, your deepest interest, and use it to it’s highest purpose… because it’s your “calling.”

Maybe you need to confront some shortcoming, some uncertainty, some less-than-stellar habit or trait before you can step boldly into the role that God lays on your heart. That’s okay! After all, that’s what Isaiah did, when he admitted he was not ready (not worthy) to be measured against God’s holiness & righteousness. But remember the second step: God’s grace was immediate and unconditional in removing that perceived impediment, and setting Isaiah free to be his better self.

It was only because Isaiah knew himself to be a “forgiven” man that he could plead with his people – plead with all the passion (and compassion!) of one who knows his own sin had been blotted out by the touch of God! That same grace was available to them as well, in just as unconditional and unexpected a way as his own.

When the question from God came: “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? Who will speak for us?” Isaiah did not pause, or debate with himself whether he should accept the obligation to propose changes and offer forgiveness to his people… he simply answered the call! (!) Not out of obedience, but out of an overwhelming sense of having been forgiven -- having been made right in the sight of God.

I believe it is only the one who has experienced the life-altering opportunity that forgiveness provides who finds the inner courage to speak up: “Here I am. Send me.” My prayer for you is that you find that occupation -- that calling, that “vocation” -- which brings out the best in you because it is rooted in your deepest longing. Whatever “holds” you back, offer it to God for cleansing and correction, and then get ready for the adventure of your life… as you respond “Yes” to God’s call.

Amen.

ISAIAH 40:1-11 & MARK 1:1-13 A Voice in the Wilderness

2011-01-16T15:47:00.000-08:00

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California 90815

January 16, 2011

    In this morning’s first reading, we hear the prophet Isaiah telling the people of Israel to “Get Ready!” A voice is crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the desert a highway for our God!”

    According to the editors of The Whole People of God Sunday School curricula (Biblical Background, Dec. 5, 1999, Worship Leader, Unit 3, page 21), the image of “the highway in the desert to celebrate the coming of God’s glory” is actually drawn from a Babylonian victory celebration! The defeated Jews would have heard those words as they were brought captive into Babylon after Jerusalem had been destroyed. But the way Isaiah tells it: it is the God of Israel, not of Babylon, who is the victorious one, who turns the highway around -- leading the captives out of Babylon (back across the Jordanian desert) returning them to Jerusalem.

   What Isaiah hears (in that voice in the wilderness) is a promise that God’s coming salvation will be greater than their suffering of defeat.
“Comfort! Comfort ye, my people” says God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, her penalty has been paid...”
A voice cries out in the wilderness:
    “Prepare the way of the Lord. Clear a highway across
    the desert for our God!”

   If we were with the Army or Marines in Iraq, which is where Isaiah first heard these words in the Sixth Century BC (although in those days it was called the “Babylonian” Empire), we would prepare the way by using our Engineer Brigade – paving a highway, or laying down a sort of “landing strip” for the Lord. While this may not be our idea of how best to “prepare” for the coming of the Savior, for a desert dweller it must have seemed to be a piece of heaven come down!

   If the valleys would be lifted up and the mountains and hills made low, there would be no more hard climbs or knee-wrenching descents; no bandits hiding down in the gulley, or wolves around the next bend. According to Isaiah (and echoed by John the Baptist) the “way of the Lord” will be flattened out, made straight, & totally exposed for all to see.

   As our choir put it in their anthem:
“Let deserts now sing, rejoice as in spring;
prepare ye the way of the Lord! Ye oceans and waves,
break forth now in praise; prepare ye the way
of the Lord. All forests and trees, all rivers and seas;
prepare ye the way of the Lord! For the day of
redemption is coming, and the time of judgment is
near. For the mouth of Jehovah has spoken and the
glory of God is revealed! Let the crooked be straight
and the rough places plain; prepare ye the way of the
Lord! ”     (from the Cantata “A Time for Alleluia” words &
    music by Joseph M. Martin, published by Harold Flammer
    division of Shawnee Press, copyright 2001)

    As though on cue, John the Baptist appears on the scene: a rough character, who seems to be as wild as the wilderness in which he preaches. He associates baptism with repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

    I know that at some point last year I explained that the Greek word for “repentance” is “metanoia” and it means to “turn around” – to change direction, or to change one’s mind; to change one’s behavior, or to change our attitude.

    This strikes me as a better way to “prepare” ourselves for the coming of God’s Savior into our world (and into our lives): instead of straightening out the highway and making rough places smooth (all of which is external corrections and superficial adjustments) it’s better that we change direction, or change our minds about something; change our behavior, or our attitude… Repentance for the forgiveness of sins… Changes in our lives for the betterment of us and our society.

    Of course, there is a deep resistance to change in many people’s minds. Partly, I suppose, it’s because things seem to change so quickly in our modern, technological world. Everything changes so fast and so often that we can’t seem to keep up! We lose our bearings when things are always changing.

   If you’re like me, we occasionally look for a sanctuary from the endless ebb and flow of changes going on around us. People we care about are moving, our bodies are aging, things are shifting in our economy, and the nightly news is disturbing. It’s like we can hardly stand one more change! We seek security, permanence, or at least some “old-fash-ioned” traditional setting for home-life & family & church.

   Sometimes we resist change simply because it is inconvenient. We have to do things differently, learn new tricks, get used to new programs on our computer… new “apps” on our mobile phones. Familiar Kodak Film cameras have gone digital, televisions only accept high-definition cable, banking is paperless (electronic transfers not checks).
I suspect one of the reasons congregations don’t like new hymnals when they come out is because we have to learn new songs, changed lyrics, new patterns in worship. Part of what “change” means is that we’ll have to give up things we have treasured… things old and familiar.

    As hesitant as we may be about change, as fearful as we might be about embracing the unknown, as resistant to change as we often are… the gospel calls us to look upon change as a gift! John the Baptist came, prior to Jesus, offering people an opportunity to “repent” – to change direction, to change their minds; to change our behavior,     to change our attitude, or simply to “turn around” our lives.

    Since to “repent” is to change, we church-folk should welcome change as a gift from God. It is God’s way to get us “un-stuck” from former patterns and habits of heart. It’s a gift to us, for without the process of repenting and being forgiven, we could be forever locked in ourselves bearing the consequences of our public faults and personal failings. In many situations, we cannot grow (or learn new ways) until we first recognize that we’ve been wrong.

    I believe the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous is to admit we have a problem! To admit that we are powerless over our addiction to alcohol – or to cocaine, or nicotine, or whatever the besetting habit may be. We must first admit that life has become unmanageable. Without that first step, there can be no real healing. As I have often said: we have to face it if we hope to fix it.

   The Baptist’s call for “repentance,” which we hear so clearly as John prepares the way for Jesus, says that we don’t have to be forever trapped in that deceit, that habit of heart, that sin of commission or omission.
God blesses us -- blesses all people -- with the possibility of change! We can turn away from the dark and toward the light. We can be forgiven our former indiscretions, errors, and other sins.

    For most of us, that turning around is gradual and on-going. For some, it is sudden and dramatic! Those are the ones who have a testimony that says they’ve been “born again” since the change in their lives was so fundamental.

    All that is quite familiar to us Christians, because we have grown accustomed to hearing those words from John the Baptist, as we did in our second reading from the Gospel of Mark. John prepares the people for the coming of Jesus. But in Isaiah’s original text, the message goes much deeper, as again the voice in the wilderness says: “Cry out!”

    And Isaiah responds: “What shall I cry?...”

   The answer is a bit unsettling: “All people are like grass...” Our very lives (our best efforts; our faith, goodness, & beauty) is ultimately no more substantial than a flower-bud blooming in a field! “Grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it. Surely the people are grass!”

    I don’t know about you, but those words don’t give me much comfort. In fact, they’re downright depressing! Our mortal lives are fragile and fleeting, no more substantial than a dandelion or a rose-bud...     Thanks, Isaiah, I needed that!

    I wonder how his original audience took those words, inasmuch as their cities have been destroyed, their crops burned, Solomon’s majestic Temple had been reduced to rubble and ruin, their Jewish soldiers had been killed in battle, their families starved into submission, and the remnant people of Judah have mostly been carted off as prisoners of war (exiles) to be used as slaves in Babylon.

   I guess if we were among them, we’d say: “You’re darned right, Isaiah…” They probably felt like “withered grass.” Life had become a “bummer”-- full of loss & chaos…    and hopelessness.

    At the outset, God wants Isaiah to speak tenderly to Jerusalem -- “comfort, O comfort ye my people.”   And yet, his remark about how mortal life is like grass, and how the flowering of our faith is no longer-lasting than a morning-glory, isn’t going to do the trick, if you ask me!

   The people to whom these words were spoken had been torn away from their homeland by military force -- an invasion by Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian Army -- and the leading citizens, including the priests, had been thrown into a foreign land with an alien culture & faith… not even as “refugees,” but as “captives” -- exiles!

    Of all things that had seemed “permanent” to them in their lives as Jews in Judah (of all the events that took place in the first 39 chapters of Isaiah’s book) nothing remained! They saw themselves as having been punished by God... doubly so, in fact -- perhaps even as abandoned by God!

    It is in this period of utter desolation -- when the people were helpless, hopeless, and hapless -- that Isaiah senses a call from God to “comfort” them in their distress. Isaiah hears the voice of God reciting the Babylonian victory song as a promise that the glory of Yahweh (their God Jehovah, the Lord-God of Israel) would be revealed, and all people would see it together! What a promise! Wow!

    The voice in the wilderness says: “Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the desert a highway for our God!” In other words, you’re not gonna remain in exile; not much longer. Get up from your pit of self-pity and despair, and get out the shovels! Get yourselves ready for a return trip. Get a move on! Fill in the valleys, cut a pass through the hills, level the uneven ground, smooth out the rough spots... God will lead us back through the wasteland, out of the wilderness, and return us to the Promised Land as before.

    In addition to those marching orders (1) to comfort the people, and (2) to make a straight path for God to travel upon, the voice in the wilderness says: “Cry out!” C’mon Isaiah, spread the word! Whazz’a matter… cat got your tongue?
Instead of doing as he was told, Isaiah challenges the voice.

    It’s a part of the story that we would just as soon forget, for it strikes us as irreverent -- a bit unfaithful -- a poor response for a prophet to make. Isaiah does not speak words of comfort, as he has been asked to do. He does not start right out and tell the people about the glory of the coming Way of the Lord, as we would like to imagine. Instead, he stalls out. And for good reason...

    Isaiah remembers how his words of warning before the destruction of Jerusalem were not heeded by the people. All his preceding 39 chapters of exhortation, prophetic preaching, and proclaiming went nowhere – the people of Jerusalem disregarded his criticisms and dismissed his warnings. They disrespected the venerable old prophet and ended up in Exile. Now they are in a far worse mess than back then. They’ve lost everything!

   Their past is gone – for nearly 200 years, the ten Northern tribes of Israel had been wiped off the face of the earth (defeated by the Assyrians in 722 BC) -- and now, as Isaiah speaks these words, the Judeans have also been conquered & displaced. Their future looks bleak. How can Isaiah begin to think that anyone will listen to him now!?

   It seems to me that the prophet is as crushed in spirit as are any of his people as their exile begins. He hears the call from God to speak words of comfort, and to energize a new hope, and to tell people to “get ready!” but he fails to do so!

    A voice says: “Cry out!” And Isaiah says:             “What shall I cry?...” (What can I say?)

    “God, if there’s one thing we have learned through all this chaos, it’s that people are like grass... The best we can do is nothing more than a flower blooming in the field! The grass withers, flowers fade, & you Lord… you let it happen.”

    Do you hear the anguish?

    Most of us would rather think of the prophet (as we think of John the Baptist): a faithful and strong mouthpiece for God, standing there with scroll in hand, ready to make note of whatever God says... Isaiah, the ever-obedient servant, who asks only for instructions: “Well, God, what shall I say?” to which God answers: “Tell them that all flesh is like grass.” “Thank you, God, I got it, right here in my book. Oh, I just can’t wait to spread that kind of news!”

    We don’t expect to hear the prophet respond to God: “Cry out?? What can I say!? Everyone knows that people are nothing more than grass, withering away in captivity… We are the final fading flowers of Judaism!   What can I possibly say – now – that will give anyone any comfort!?”
That familiar gravesite saying “from dust we are taken, to dust we will return” sounds like so many blades of grass... I hate to admit, but the fact that you & I are not dust now is only temporary! One day we will be gone. Isaiah got that right.

    “What can I say?” asks Isaiah of God. “We are alive for only so few moments out of an eternity!”

    As hard as it is to admit the limits of our mortality, or the limits of our persuasiveness to get anyone to change, I’m glad Isaiah raised those concerns. You see, it tells me that there is nothing “unbiblical” about raising a protest to God.

    The Bible is full of people who raise questions about God’s ways, especially when God’s Will seems impossible or unfair. The prophets and Psalm writers often remind God what it’s like to be human, what it’s like to be finite, to be vulnerable. The Book of Job puts it this way in Chapter 14 (verses 1-3): “A mortal... few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow, and does not last. Do you (God) fix your eyes on such a one?” (Holy Bible, the New Revised Standard Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989, page 463)

    What does God do when a prophet “talks back” like that? Like Isaiah did, and like the Psalmist does, and like old long-suffering Job did… What would you expect? A slap? A rebuke? Yet another heavy dose of punishment?

    No... Remember how today’s text began: God wants to comfort the people in their time of distress, not punish them. God wants to energize them to prepare for a new beginning, not to shame them (or blame them) for their past defeat.

    The voice comes back calmly, tenderly, picking up the prophet’s last anguished words, and making them a bit more gentle... easing the anguish, preparing the ground for the good news... “Yes, I know...” says the voice. “I know ‘the grass withers and the flower fades’...” Then, after a pause, the voice continues: “but the word of God stands forever.”

    “All that you say is true,” God replies to Isaiah, “but underneath the things I ask of you (for now) is the on-going eternity and veracity of my word. That’s what lasts. Rest yourself on that foundation.”

    The hymn-writer puts it this way: “Thou changest not,
    thy compassions, they fail not; as thou hast been,
     thou forever wilt be. Great is thy faithfulness...”

    The voice of God (in the wilderness of exile & defeat) comes gently back to respond to the prophet’s anguished cry. “I know your lives are fragile and over much too soon. But while you live, you have a choice. You can live in service to the everlasting values which I represent -- you can prepare the way upon which I will go before you -- or you can go your own way, and blow away like dandelion fluff in the wind. You can take my hand as you move along your journey, or you can go it alone. You can work with me -- comforting the afflicted and doing your part to bring about a better day (cutting a new path through the old desert) -- or you can spend your time like so many people do, following the ways of the world and the spirit of their day. Your life will be relatively short in either case, but my way will last. My way is the only highway to the future.”

    Like Isaiah, we can cry out to God in protest: tell it like it is in all our frustration, grief and despair… Like Isaiah, we can say why we don’t want to obey God’s call anymore…
We can talk about how we’ve tried it before and it failed to make any difference... We can put ourselves in God’s hands with confidence, as Isaiah did at the outset of his ministry (the story we will talk about next Sunday), and still find ourselves crying out to God when we are frustrated along the way, or afraid… It’s OK. God knows us.

   God knows we live “like grass” and that we will “fade” like a flower… even though God never dies.    But in a special way, we Christians realize that, in Jesus, God learned first-hand the shortness of life, the suddenness of death. In Jesus, who was born in a stable, lived a “wandering” life, and who died on a Roman cross, God experienced the whole gamut of human “fragility.”

    In Jesus, we see a mortal who served the Immortal God whole-heartedly. In Jesus, we are given the example of one whose life was very brief, but who entered into real partnership with the Everlasting Eternal. In Jesus, God is reaching out to us, saying: “Since you are here today and gone tomorrow, why not trust yourself to the One who can preserve your life in all its fullness of meaning even after death has returned your body to the dust?”

   In all our fragility, and in the face of hard times, through repentance and forgiveness, we can reach out to God through Jesus, who is the Word of God in the flesh… the word that stands forever.
                            Amen.