The New Through the Eyes of the Old

Good morning!  I’m afraid I have to start off my sermon with an apology, today.  You see, normally when pastors write a sermon we do so with certain goals in mind.  Our hope, in the end, is to glean a relevant message from God out of the Scriptures and then do our level best to hit you square in the heart with it.  You see, to live in this broken and sometimes all too ugly world of ours is to have our hearts harden, to have them darken and grow cold.  It becomes all too easy to withdraw from the world, to ignore the needy, to turn our backs on the vulnerable and defenseless, to focus only on our own selfish wants.  It is for that reason, I think, that we as Christians know it is in our best interests to gather into community often and hear a message that tenderizes the heart.  A message that brings light to the soul even as it warms the cold places of our spirits.  It is for that reason that I need to apologize, however, because I have no intention of giving that kind of sermon.

                I have no intention of giving that kind of sermon not because I don’t feel it is important, that we as human beings don’t need to be deeply intentional about the state of our hearts, but because our text today requires something different.  Indeed, I feel if I preached such a sermon I would do a grievous injustice not only to you but to our lesson as well.  Ladies and Gentlemen, something absolutely remarkable happened with the institution of the New Covenant, and when Christ declared that he was giving us the keys to the kingdom it really was a groundbreaking and unheard of thing.  Coming from the religion of Judaism, a religion that told you what to wear, what to eat, and where to worship, a religion that regulated almost every area of human life; to have Jesus tell his disciples, both the apostles and us living today, that we have the keys, that we now are trusted as the highest officials in the kingdom, able to set policy, and make important decisions as to life, faith, and even worship all on our own.  We can choose what hymns we sing, what holidays we will follow, secular or otherwise.  We can create liturgy, and decide for ourselves what foods we ought to eat.  Yes we have Communion and Baptism, but even with these the particulars of when, where, and with what have been entirely left to the faithful.   But all this freedom comes at significant price, we have the freedom of choice, but we are also held responsible for what we do choose. 

To be responsible requires that we be very intentional with our choices, that we be thoughtful about what we do and why.  This means not only being aware of the advantages of what we have chosen, but also being very careful not to ignore the flaws that come with it either.  On point for our lesson today is our community’s choice to preach solely from the gospels.  I want you to know I agree with this decision wholeheartedly.  It makes us supremely Christ-centered, and deliberately keeps the gospel the focus of not only our worship but our lives as Christians.  I would not have it change for anything, but as a minister called by God under this system, I must tend to its flaws.  The flaw of preaching only from the gospels is that when you need the Old Testament to understand the gospel, the temptation is to do without.  By focusing only on a small portion of scripture it becomes really hard to show you what a passage means given the whole of the Scriptures.  And when really Big Picture things are happening in our gospels, Big Picture things that took several books in the Old Testament to articulate, we miss them, and we skew our reading of the gospel because we haven’t preached on anything else. Such is the case with our gospel lesson today.

                Now, as a pastor, I could have ignored all that.  I could have simply ignored the big picture, I could have stuck to our chosen method of simply writing an emotional sermon that only considers these few verses out of context from the much larger history of Salvation.  I could have hit you square in the heart, pounding the pulpit and shouting, “WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?  ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE FAMILY FOR CHRIST?  HOW DOES GOD KNOW IF HE’S FIRST IN YOUR LIFE IF YOU HAVEN’T SENT YOUR OWN MOTHER TO THE CURB FOR HIM?”  I could have done that, I could have written a sermon that punched your right in the solar plexus.  But that isn’t the point of this passage, and it would have been irresponsible and unfaithful of me to preach that sermon, though indeed at this point as Americans we all have heard it preached.  I could co opt the small picture presented in this gospel to my own selfish ends, but I am not going to do so.  Instead, what I am going to do is to help you see the part of the story in light of the whole, to the flower the mind in addition to stoking the embers of the heart.

                Often times when Jesus is doing something that seems out of character or just odd for him it is indeed because there are Big picture issues at work.  The Old Testament prophets held out a fervent hope that the new covenant would move away from a restricting religion to a relationship of conscience.  That instead of a thousand rules to enforce the externalities of faith there would instead be loving hearts that have no need of them.  The prophet Hosea proclaimed loudly that God desires mercy, not ritual sacrifice, and the acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.  The prophet Micah shouted from the mountains, “The Lord has shown what he requires of you, he has shown you what the rules are…to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”  But of them all perhaps Jeremiah articulated the point best, when, in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem, and as the last nail in the coffin of the old covenant was about to be struck, he offered this unrelenting vision.  “Israel will survive saith the Lord, and the covenant I will make with them will put my Torah in their minds, and it will be written on their hearts.  No longer will they teach their neighbor or say to one another, “Know the Lord,” for they will all know me.”   

                Now, when you reached the New Testament, when you read the words in the gospel that said, “I am giving you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, whatever you bind or loose on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven,” in that moment you may have heard much.  You may have heard 16^th century European theology, you even might have heard the voice of Mrs. McGullicutty, your old Sunday School teacher, but what you didn’t hear was the clamoring joy as the hopes and dreams of generations of Israelites were fulfilled.  It was here!  The time came!  The faithful no longer need to be broken under the law, no more is righteousness found in keeping such a cornucopia of rules.  With the coming of Messiah, the anointed one, humanity can at last enjoy the firstfruits of choice!  The saving work of God had not been in vain!

                But just as you would not have seen the Old Testament in that gospel lesson, just as you might well have read that verse and not realized all that those few words brought into being, so also might we miss the culmination of so many Old Testament hopes in the passage that lies before us.  Just as the prophets proclaimed the coming of a New Covenant of Freedom and Conscience, so also they too proclaimed the coming Kingdom of God.  Isaiah declared with boldness,

“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him— the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord— and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

            Neither was the prophet Daniel silent, “And in (those days) the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all the kingdoms of mankind and bring them to an end, and it alone shall stand forever.  And, “There before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”

                So when we read our passage, when we see Jesus saying, “I have not come to bring peace but the sword,” we are confused, we scratch our heads, and we are tempted to move on, but what we are missing is the culmination of what generations of prophets foretold.  Jesus is saying “How can you not interpret the present time?  The promises of God are being fulfilled before your very eyes!  I am here!  I am the foretold One!  I am the branch of Jesse.  With Justice I decide for the poor, with righteousness I judge the needy.  I slay wickedness with my words and I am the One who establishes the kingdom where tears are no more.  But make no mistake, I am not here for peace at any cost!  The Father did not lead the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt to abandon them to the oppression of either Rome or Jerusalem.  My mission is not the elimination of a tyrant but the elimination of tyranny.  Every oppressive system, every government, every religion, that breaks my people’s backs will be hauled off in chains before me when all is said and done, and because of this, because there is so much at stake, expect the people who rely on those systems, who benefit from misery and despair, expect them to absolutely come out of the woodwork because of everything that I am doing. They will not be some far off Lord, they will not be strangers or aliens living in your midst, they will be your mother and your father.  They will be your brothers and sisters, they will be very people that you hold most dear.  They are the ones that will side with the enemy and they will do everything in their power to get you to do the same. 

                You see my friends, just as we in the New Covenant are enjoying the firstfruits of freedom promised to our ancestors so also do we see the Kingdom of God working diligently in our midst, but it means that we must be diligent.  We live in a very special time, a time when the promises of God our unfolding in ways never before seen, and because of that we must be wary.  Both require faithfulness and intentional obedience to Spirit of God among us.  Let us resolve to be careful in our actions, to be discerning in our words and in our relationships.  If we say we serve the Lord of Freedom, a Christ who teaches us how to act rather than telling us what to do, then let us be sure we act in such a way that all the forces of misery and oppression count us as implacable foes and let us do so knowing just who might turn on us in that fight.  Keep to what is good, steel your spirits for what is right, and do so knowing the battle has already been won.  No matter the evil or the ugliness, Good will overcome.  Amen.  

The Very Real Human Cost of Greed

Good morning!  Grace and peace unto you from God our Judge and Jesus Christ the arbiter and enforcer of our faith…boy, that really doesn’t sound too nice does it?  I mean, in a sense it is true.  God does judge, and our experience of Jesus at the end of history will be quite a bit different than the way we encountered him at the first.  Wise Christians are slow to invoke this aspect of God, especially in worship, and I think they do so for a very good reason.  While it is easy to get caught up in the American trend of self-righteousness, to paint causes and people as all either all good or all evil, specifically our own causes as all good and everybody else’s as all evil, the fact is we as mature people of faith realize that to call up images of the divine courtroom demanding judgment often does little more than put ourselves at the very top of docket.  This is why “Judge not, lest ye be judged” has been a mantra of the Church since its very foundations, because as Christians we know that God will bring justice about, in fact he will get right on their case just as soon as He is done with ours.

          Our gospel lesson today begins with such a legal dispute.  A family has been split apart over a matter of inheritance and a random man in the crowd seeks Jesus’ aid.  He is not asking Jesus for help to be reconciled to his brother, however, nor is he not coming to Jesus out of a place of suffering and needing a grievous wrong to be righted; he merely sees an opportunity, he wants to use Jesus to get the outcome he wants, namely the outcome that nets himself more stuff.

          I must admit, I feel I know this situation all too well, and I know it for several reasons.  As someone with his law degree I could tell you horror stories of families that tore each other apart as they greedily sought to gain money through the law, I could tell you all the twists and weaves the courts have had to do specifically with wills and estates.  I could tell you how well developed Inheritance Law is because of all the people, Christian people, willing to sue their brothers and sisters in court instead of peaceably and justly negotiating at home.  I know this situation well not only because of my legal training, but I also know it well because as a human being with a family I have lived it every single day of my life.

          I’ll be honest, I’ve been a pastor of this congregation for almost a year now, and it absolutely has been one of the greatest honors and joys of my life.  But when I hear you speak warmly of family, of brothers and sisters who visit, of fond memories of cousins, uncles who helped to cover up misdeeds and aunts who for all the world are simultaneously best friends and wise women, I’m at something of a disconnect.  I don’t know what any of that is like.  My brother doesn’t talk to me.  My aunts prayed for my father’s death and they called me Satan’s spawn behind my back because I was raised Lutheran.  And my own parents, well, we are so estranged I doubt if I will even hear of their passing.  We are a family split apart, and it is because at the end of the day they have learned to value possessing things and currying influence more than they value their own children.

          Every event that happened in our family for as far back as I can remember was used as a kind of emotional debt, an opportunity to jockey for position from within the family and gain some financial benefit.  One daughter needed help one time and all the others made sure their parents never forgot it.  “You helped daughter x with their house payment, why can’t you cosign on my car loan?  You cosigned daughter y’s car loan, why won’t you help us buy land?”  And on, and on, and on for generations.  If you were to walk into my grandmother’s house today and if you would check under the vases, under the base of her magnificent doll collection, you would find stickers with her daughter’s names on them.  Her children went into their home and laid claim to their mother’s and father’s things while they were still living.  I wish I was joking.  That’s how far greed took them and that is exactly the place greed will take all of you if you give in to it.

          And this attitude of greed, this desiring of things over the relationships that we have is absolutely the focus of our gospel lesson.  This random man that earlier in the gospel Luke tells us was in a crowd of thousands, all of whom bustling to hear Jesus’ teaching.  This man is there before the promised King, his long awaited Messiah and Emmanuel, God with us, but he is not there for wisdom, he is not there to be healed of some infirmity or to be set free from that which binds him, spiritual or otherwise.  No, he follows this crowd because he sees dollar signs, an opportunity to get what he wants out of a current dispute, and that’s about it. 

          And what does Jesus do? Does he listen to the man’s circumstances, does he inquire what the dispute is about?  No, Jesus calls him out and makes his passion for things an example to the entire crowd.  Jesus says the forboding words, “Man, who appointed me judge and arbiter over you.” Now some have interpreted this passage to mean that Jesus does not believe himself an earthly judge over earthly matters, but the fact remains that theology is nowhere to be found in Luke or any other gospel.  The reality is, ladies and gentlemen, this far into Luke it would be blazingly obvious who appointed Jesus judge and arbiter over the man in question, and that Judge looks upon such attitudes most poorly. What could be read as Jesus saying, “I was not appointed your judge, why are you involving me,” is instead, “You know who appointed me Judge over you, and you know the Father looks grievously on people with such wicked thoughts as yours.”

          It is here that Jesus then cries out to the crowd, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” And to drive the point home he tells them a parable:

“The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

          In a culture that considered the wealthy blessed by God, this parable is more than enough to give them pause as it should us.  After all, what is the American dream BUT to build bigger barns so we may eat drink and be merry?  That a rich man would be so judged would have been astonishing, and today we as Americans pay this parable little heed because otherwise we would realize just how much we have in common with this doomed man.  Now does God want us miserable?  Does God want us to suffer, to be perpetually on the verge of starvation, and derive only misery out of this life that we have been given?  Of course He doesn’t!  God’s problem is not that we enjoy the bounties this life, His problem is that we continuously need to enjoy it to other people’s detriment.  Nowhere, does the rich man of the parable consider those less fortunate than him, nowhere does he even consider the state of his own family, for the doomed man it is all about him and what he wants.

          Ladies and Gentlemen, I ask you, does 10,000 dollars seem like a lot of money?  A person earning $7.25 an hour will spend 80 times that in their working career.  Very likely, every single one of us in this hall has already spent that amount of money or close to it in bills and the year’s only barely half over.  Is it really that much, then?  If you were offered a mansion to live in, would you take it?  Could you afford to upkeep it?  Could you pay the property taxes and fix all the things that could go wrong on the property, or would it simply rot in your keeping?  Is greed worth it?  Is it worth sacrificing family over?  Is it worth severing your relationship with God? 

My friends, I am going to point out something to you that is extremely sobering.  You know my children.  My children love you.  You have spent time with them, you’ve talked with them, engaged them, and help them grow.  You’ve granted them opportunities to serve, to befriend you and to befriend your own children.  You as a congregation have more memories and know my children better than all the rest of my family combined, and you see them for about an hour once a week.  My family is missing out on one of the best parts of life - getting to know the next generation, and for what?  A bigger barn?   

 A life of greed has consequences, ladies and gentlemen, both in this life and the next; but don’t think for a moment that we are somehow guiltless because others are more obvious about it.  How many families go unclothed despite our own full closets?  How many children sleep on our streets tonight, guarded over by pimps and drug dealers, and if you are familiar at all with the twin cities, then you know that is no small number.  How many of our most vulnerable must endure this because we have found it cheaper simply not to look? 

Ladies and gentlemen, what was the last thing you prayed for?  Did you pray to talk to your Father, to cast your worries and your cares on Him, or was it to ask for things?  A job you wanted, perhaps?  A good deal on a car?  That’s if you prayed to God at all, of course.  And when it came to giving to charity or buying something stupid and selfish for the week, who among us would dare stand up in this house and lie, saying we chose charity even part of time?  

          I say this again, because it is important, God does not want us to be miserable.  God does not expect us to starve ourselves or live lives perpetually on the verge of despair.  But God does expect us to be responsible with what we are given, and to not exclude the people who need our help the most.  We don’t have to be the doomed man in the parable, we don’t have to be the fool in the crowd of thousands, wasting a chance to meet God in a futile attempt to get more things.  We can value people.  We can stand firm in faith, knowing that God will indeed provide our daily bread.  We can live a life apart from fear, apart from greed and a misbegotten sense of self, we can live the best sort of life.  But we cannot continue to value Convenience and Comfort, Ego and Estates, over the needs of the human family and still pretend that we are the Body of Christ.