26 October 2008

Matthew 22:34-46

In the Hebrew scriptures, what we’ve come to commonly call the Old Testament, there are many, many laws, over 600 I’ve heard, though I haven’t counted them all myself. We don’t hear about most of them; they don’t often come up in our lectionary readings and few of us sit down to read through them. And I’m not convinced that’s not really a bad thing. I’m not going to try to convince you, for instance, to go home and read Leviticus, as I did recommend you do with Philippians a few weeks ago. These were laws given to the Israelites that ordered their society. Some of them we twenty-first century North Americans can make sense of; some we can’t. But that’s why we have Biblical scholars to help us along when we need them.

Of course, and unfortunately, some notable laws get dragged out when it’s convenient to some people to do so, such as the thirteenth verse of the twentieth chapter of Leviticus. This one is certainly getting plenty of play at the moment, I’m sure. It’s the one that says: If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them. (NRSV) In the past few weeks, I’m rather certain that this one has been quoted in churches around our state as good Christians are told how to vote, I mean of course urged to vote, on Proposition 8. [Note to non-California readers: Proposition 8 is the ballot initiative on which we shall be voting in less than two weeks which would take away the right of same-sex couples to marry.] Now, if you’re expecting me to launch into a defense of a liberal understanding of Leviticus 20:13 and the Holiness Code of the Israelites, it’s not going to happen today. But (and this is a blatant advertisement in the middle of my sermon) do be sure to attend the screening of the film “For the Bible Tells Me So” next Sunday, 2 November at four p.m. which we are hosting with Community UCC of San Carlos, CA in the sanctuary . It goes through the scriptures that are often used to justify prejudice and discrimination against lesbian and gay people and gives good answers about how we might read them in a different light.

There are many laws that called the Hebrew people to holiness. A few weeks ago, in our lectionary readings, we read the Decalogue: those 10 laws from which all the others sprang, which we know better as the ten commandments. Among them are laws about who can offer a food offering in the temple: no one who has a blemish, any physical condition could make one impure, even a broken foot or hand, can do so. There are laws about how to plow the fields and what kind of cloth one can wear. Laws about how to treat foreigners and sojourners. Laws that cover the highs and the lows, the grand and the mundane. And the Jewish faith, through the centuries we call b.c., kept these laws, writing them down; committing them to the written word.

And Jesus, our Jesus, was a good Jew. Though under Roman rule at this point in history, after being under various other conquering empires over the years, the rules purportedly given to Moses, the same great Moses whose death we heard of in the Deuteronomy passage today, carried on and were known by these Jews among whom Jesus taught and lived some 2,000 years ago. And Jesus knew them. As a teacher, a rabbi, he would have known them well and thoroughly.

So it’s not surprising that this is the tack that the Pharisees, those keepers of the faith, the ones who guarded the law zealously in their day, would use to try to trip him up with the question that we heard posed to him in today’s gospel passage. They had been after him with various questions before this and always Jesus confounded them with his knowledge and radical understanding.

So, out of all those laws, those rules, those regulations, the Pharisees wanted to know which single, solitary one did Jesus think was most important. And they sent their biggest guns to get him; someone who was clearly well-versed in the law and knew it in and out.

Jesus gave them his answer and then went on to give them the next one in line. And they were both about love: love God; love your neighbor. And, Jesus added, every other law in the scriptures hangs from them like clothes hang from a clothesline. And like a clothesline, those clothes won’t stay up without the support that a clothesline gives. All the laws need those two basic laws in order to stand.

And that’s the genius of Jesus. He pegs all the laws on love. Now, we’re not talking about what so often we think of as love here. Jesus was not referring to some warm feeling, a gushy emotion that is represented these days by lace hearts, cupids and chocolates. (Don’t get me wrong though—there’s absolutely nothing wrong with chocolates!)

No, Jesus’ love was all about commitment, which is why he pegged all those other laws to these: You have to be committed, to God and to your neighbor, in order to be faithful to those laws. Commitment, love, is needed to follow everything that God demands of us.


And that brings us to the twin emphases that we’re trying to remember in our worship today: the reformation and ministry. [Note to readers: This Sunday is Reformation Sunday when Protestants remember our roots. In the Disciples of Christ, our congregation's denomination, October is "Ministerial Appreciation Month" and this is the last Sunday of that. Instead of the congregation just appreciating their clergyperson (me), there will be a time later in worship in which we recognize and celebrate the ministries of everybody.] For the early reformers, those guys on the front of our bulletin this week, calling the church back to what they believed God called it to be was an act of love. The commitment required to stand up to a powerful institution, in this case the church, that had gone awry and astray was tremendous; commitment that could only be described and understood as love. It was a love and commitment that took Jan Hus, the Czech reformer who predated Martin Luther, to the stake to be burned as a heretic. It was a love and commitment that pounded Luther’s nails into his 95 theses on that castle church door in Wittenberg that challenged the status quo then and forever. It was a love and commitment that each person pictured, including our own Disciples of Christ founders Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone, and many others not pictured, to look at the church of their day and confess “we have gone off course and we need to be set right; let’s try something new, relying on God.” And love, in the truly, deeply religious sense of that word, is what impels any good person of faith of any age including ours to look seriously and critically at what we do in the name of God. And sometimes, that very same love moves us to action and voicing our critiques and seeking justice in the name of God.

And that is what ministers do; that is what we all do. For indeed, in the then new belief that Luther put forth and Campbell and Stone among others deeply affirmed, we are a “priesthood of all believers.” That is, we are all ministers. Each of us, sitting here today, is indeed a minister. Don’t try to hide and don’t attempt denying it. It’s not just me; I’m not the only minister in this place. It’s not just those of us who have found themselves in the midst of some special worship service during which hands have been laid and charges have been made who are ministers. It doesn’t take that. It just takes baptism; it just takes listening to God; it just takes love: love of God and love of neighbor.

Which brings us back to Jesus. Jesus silenced his critics in this interchange from Matthew that we heard this morning; they didn’t come after him again, we’re told. They stopped trying to trap and discredit him with their questions. We do know though that they didn’t stop there; they did come after him and, thinking they had won, got him put to death. But love won out in the end, didn’t it? God’s love for us, God’s commitment to us God’s creation, shines through and calls us to mirror that very same love, that very same commitment, to God and to our neighbor.

Thomas Merton, the great 20th century brother and mystic had some thoughts about love that I’d like to end with. He said:

To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name. If, therefore, I do anything or think anything or say anything or know anything that is not purely for the love of God, it cannot give me peace, or rest, or fulfillment, or joy. To find love I must enter into the sanctuary where it is hidden, which is the mystery of God. (A Book of Hours, Kathleen Deignan, ed.).

12 October 2008

Philippians 4:1-9

The book of Philippians is about two thousand two hundred and fifty (2,250) words long. That’s not really very long when you think about it. This sermon that I’m about to preach over the next few minutes will come in at about nineteen hundred seventeen (1,917) words; somewhat comparable in length. The Declaration of Independence, in comparison, has one thousand three hundred and twenty-eight (1,328) words; only 922 words shorter than Philippians. The Gettysburg Address is a short two hundred fifty-six words (256). The whole Bible, from Genesis all the way through to Revelation, contains about seven hundred eighty-three thousand one hundred thirty-seven (783,137) words in all. That means, if my math is correct, that Philippians takes up only about .3% of the whole of our scriptures. It’s not really very long. You can sit down with your Bible and read it quickly and easily. And I commend doing just that to you. You won’t be sorry or regret the few minutes it would take you. [Note: Word counts, except for the count of Philippians and this sermon, come from WikiAnswers at wiki.answers.com. The Philippians and sermon word count was done on my own. All are approximations of course.]

Today’s passage from Philippians is right near the end of the book. If you’ve followed along in the lectionary over the past four weeks, this letter of Paul’s has been the epistle reading during the course of that time; we’ve had a bit from each of the four chapters, a taste really, and today is the last time we’ll hear from Philippians for a while. So we have to catch it while we can.

If you do follow my recommendation and go home and read through this marvelous little book, you’ll find that a true sense of joy actually emanates from Paul’s words. Many of us are used to another side of Paul: his attempts to set some congregation aright or his lists of those things his readers aren’t supposed to do or his lovingly yet firm reproaches. And oh how he does reproach and reprimand and tell folks exactly how they should be living their lives. But that, admittedly, is the Paul who too often comes to our minds, to my mind at least.

In this letter to that church in Philippi, however, we catch a glimpse of a different Paul: relaxed, maybe; joyous, certainly. Throughout this letter, Paul uses the words joy or rejoice a total of fourteen times. That may not seem like much but those words are found every so often throughout the letter. It’s like he’s sprinkling it over his work as a baker might dust a cake with powdered sugar. ‘Joy’ in fact is the fiftieth word of Philippians and it comes only after he has dispensed with the standard greetings that you’ll find in chapter one; the “grace and peace to you through God” stuff. He dives right into joy from the start and stays on it.

And so all through this correspondence, Paul is dropping little bits of joy. And then, just near the end comes Paul’s entreaty to ‘rejoice’, not just once but twice: “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, Rejoice!” A double-whammy of joy!

He doesn’t leave much to wonder about. It’s an order, really: Rejoice, gosh darn it, rejoice! Paul clearly seems to be in a good mood. He’s writing to a congregation that he obviously has strong affection for. They have supported him and his ministry not only in prayer but with their finances; they’ve put their money where their mouth (or should it be faith?) is. In fact, just after our passage this morning leaves off, he writes that this church in Philippi was the only one, the only one of all those early congregations, to support him with their money at one point. Paul is truly grateful for this group of people and doesn’t hesitate to show it through his joy.

All this rejoicing; it can really get to you, can’t it? I mean, sure, they were cheerful people who had just come into the faith and were joyfully spreading the good news. Why shouldn’t they be joyful?

Well, of course, the argument can be made that they did have reasons not to be joyful. Life was rough for them. They lived under the oppressive Roman Empire which cared little for the peoples it subjugated. And being a Christian at this point in history was dangerous: you could be arrested and killed for your faith, a concept lost to us in North America these days. Becoming a follower of The Way was not something to be taken lightly. But these new converts to the faith, God bless them, kept Christianity alive and going through all the perils they faced. Without them, we would not be here today.

And not only that, to top it all off, Paul was spreading all this joy from jail of all places. He wrote this letter while imprisoned for spreading the gospel, for preaching the good news, for converting and teaching and doing all the things that we take for granted, for being a thorn in the side of the Romans who ran things in those parts. And in the midst of that, in the midst of being in the lock up with the force of the entire empire breathing down his neck, from out of that situation flow these 2,250 words of joy and thanksgiving.

Now don’t get me wrong; Paul had plenty to be unhappy about. But this is joy we’re talking about here; not happiness. There is a difference, of course, between joy and happiness; a large difference, I think. Happiness is externally driven and comes from outside circumstances or things (oh, how things do make us happy). Joy, I believe, comes from within and is a spiritual matter rather than a material one. And I do like to think that Paul would agree with me.

There in prison Paul is, of all things, joyful. His life is on the line and he knows it. But that doesn’t concern him one bit. In fact, earlier in Philippians, he holds a mini-debate with himself about whether it’s better to live or die. If he dies, then he is with Christ and what could be better? If he lives, he can continue to support folks like these dear Philippians. Which is more desired? Who cares, Paul decides, he’s going to be joyful no matter what.

And that’s his advice, no, his charge, to them, to us too, in this letter. Rejoice. Rejoice through it all because you are in Christ. Rejoice because God loves you. Rejoice. The Lord is near. Rejoice. Whatever your situation, you should rejoice.


Well, of course, that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? We live in an era of fear and greed, both of which like nothing better than feasting on our souls and reducing our spirits to quivering blobs within us. The financial world is, to put it mildly, in turmoil and that’s going to affect us undoubtedly. Our nation is carrying on two seemingly unending, ostensibly unendable wars in far away places to where we send young people to the very real possibility of death while we argue whether there is really any effect in all this on terrorism. Citizens of the west, and our country particularly, have awoken, belatedly perhaps, to the reality that there are those who inhabit this same globe as us who would love nothing better than to do us harm; deep, culture-shifting harm as we experienced a little over seven years ago. We are overwhelmed by unfathomable poverty both here and abroad. We face foul facts, if we are brave enough, and discover that clean drinking water, hygienic sanitation, and access to food for survival and medical care for many in our world are unreachable, unattainable aspirations; things to be hoped for, dreams, phantasms.

Of course, I would be remiss, as one whose life has been greatly affected by it, if I didn’t mention the seeming epidemic of mental illnesses that pervade. Bi-polar illness and major depression alone affect approximately 18 million American adults. Since our understandings of mental health are vastly different from the knowledge of the first century, if indeed they had any knowledge what so ever about mental health, I do have to wonder what Paul would say to us now.

What would Paul write in his letter to a small but faithful group like ours? What words might he pen to us in the midst of these our issues, our problems, our foibles?

I’m far from an expert on Paul and Pauline theology. In fact, if you haven’t noticed, I usually do not preach from his writings. I admit I often don’t get Paul and thus tend to set him and his tangle of thoughts aside. And that’s too bad. Paul, I believe, is probably the single person who most changed the course of Western Civilization since it was he who spread the gospel outside of the tiny confines of a first-century Roman backwater Jewish territory. But I’m no Paul expert and you should take my following words with a grain of salt; I don’t know what Paul would write to us but I’m going to, based on these 2,250 words that he composed two thousand years ago to Philippi, take a guess.

I think Paul, in the midst of the terrorism, the economic upheaval, the depression, the questions about our future, the worries, and the angst of the 21st century, would write: “Rejoice in the lord, always; again I will say, Rejoice!” Yep, I think he would. Because joy, as I said earlier, is an inner, spiritual affair that is not dependent on our outward happiness or external circumstances. We rejoice, not because of what’s going on outside of us; in fact more often than not, in spite of what’s going on out there. We are called to rejoice and to do it again and again; to rejoice always.

Now don’t get me wrong; this is not some Pollyanna view of the world through rose-colored glasses. (Did you like the mixing of metaphors in that sentence?) No, rejoicing and finding joy does not make things all better. Nor are we to ignore the problems around us and go tra-la-ing along some idyllic pansy strewn path of life. Reality is, well, real. It can be way too real at times. And reality has a way of walking up to us and smacking us on the forehead, sometimes with a two-by-four.

But when that happens, we stop for a moment to rub our foreheads where it hurts. And then we reach inside of ourselves, if we are going to listen to Paul, we reach inside to find whatever resources we have, and we all have some. Then we pull out whatever we’ve got and we rejoice.

Many years ago, a very wise friend of mine taught me a motto that I have since adopted and have tried to live by over the decades: Celebrate anything you can. We could argue the semantic differences between ‘celebrating’ and ‘rejoicing,’ but I think the sentiment behind each verb is similar. There is always something, something, to cause you to rejoice. Because through all that life throws at you, in everything you encounter, when everything else fails, you still have God. Each of us, whether we can realize it or not in any given instance, is still cloaked in a blanket of the Divine. And that, my joyful friends, is cause for rejoicing.