Ordinary Time, Summer 07
Cycle C, Proper 15
August
19, 2007
Title: All the nations belong to you
Song leader: Ernie
Worship leader: Gary
Speaker: Linda
Texts: Jeremiah 23:23-29; Psalm
82; Hebrews 11:20=12-2; Luke 12:49-56
Jeremiah
23:23 Am I a God near by, says the LORD, and not a God far off? 23:24 Who can
hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the LORD. Do I not fill
heaven and earth? says the LORD. 23:25
I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, "I
have dreamed, I have dreamed!" 23:26 How long? Will the hearts of the
prophets ever turn back--those who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their
own heart? 23:27 They plan to make my people forget my name by their
dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for
Baal. 23:28 Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who
has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat?
says the LORD. 23:29 Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer
that breaks a rock in pieces?
Psalm 82:1 God has taken his place in the divine
council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: 82:2 "How long will
you judge unjustly and show partiality to
the wicked? Selah 82:3 Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain
the right of the lowly and the destitute. 82:4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked." 82:5 They have neither
knowledge nor understanding, they walk around in darkness; all the foundations
of the earth are shaken. 82:6 I say, "You are gods, children of the Most
High, all of you; 82:7 nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like
any prince." 82:8 Rise up, O God, judge the earth; for all
the nations belong to you!
Hebrews 11:29 By faith the people passed through the
Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they
were drowned. 11:30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been
encircled for seven days. 11:31 By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish
with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.
11:32 And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon,
Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets-- 11:33 who through
faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, 11:34 quenched
raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness,
became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 11:35 Women received their
dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in
order to obtain a better resurrection. 11:36 Others suffered mocking and
flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 11:37 They were stoned to death,
they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins
of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented-- 11:38 of whom the world
was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes
in the ground. 11:39 Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith,
did not receive what was promised, 11:40 since God had provided something
better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect. 12:1 Therefore,
since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also
lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with
perseverance the race that is set before us, 12:2 looking to Jesus the pioneer
and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him
endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right
hand of the throne of God.
Luke
12:49 "I came to bring fire
to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 12:50 I have a baptism
with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!
12:51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 12:52
From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against
three; 12:53 they will be divided: father against son and son against father,
mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her
daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law." 12:54 He also
said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you
immediately say, 'It is going to rain'; and so it happens. 12:55 And when you
see the south wind blowing, you say, 'There will be scorching heat'; and it
happens. 12:56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of
earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
Contemporary quote: We avoid the things that we're afraid of because we
think there will be dire consequences if we confront them. But the truly dire
consequences in our lives come from avoiding things that we need to learn about
or discover.
-- Shakti Gawain
(didn’t use) Our dilemma is
that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for
things to remain the same but get better.
-- Sydney J. Harris
Introduction:
Perhaps
I should be ashamed of myself…
but I’m going to inflict an old
lightbulb joke on you:
How many psychiatrists does
it take to change a lightbulb?
Only one—but the bulb really has to want to change…
And here’s another thought
on change,
from a source I probably haven’t quoted here before,
General Eric Shinseki:
If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.
(General
Shinseki, you may recall, raised the ire of the then-Secretary of Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz when
he told the U.S. Senate Armed
Services committee before the Iraq war that "something in the order of
several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for post-war
Iraq.)
Texts
of Crisis:
Today’s texts are texts of
crisis and change.
As such, they are not a lot
of fun to preach on;
they
demand an uncomfortable assessment
of
what lies below the surface of our highly-valued comfort….
and they insist that we ask the questions behind the
questions.
They demand that we change--
or
become irrelevant.
I want to focus primarily on the psalm,
as it is
one that most of us are not particularly familiar with.
It tends to be avoided because it presents
an alien,
disconcerting worldview
that
recognizes a whole courtroom full of gods.
If you want to follow along, turn to Psalm 82; it’s on your
bulletin.
I’ll read it aloud:
82:1 God has taken his
place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he
holds judgment:
82:2 "How long will you judge unjustly and
show partiality to the wicked? Selah 82:3 Give justice to the weak and the
orphan;
maintain the right of the
lowly and the destitute.
82:4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand
of the wicked."
82:5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk around in
darkness;
all the foundations of the
earth are shaken.
82:6 I say, "You are gods, children of the
Most High, all of you;
82:7 nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and
fall like any prince."
82:8 Rise up, O God, judge the earth;
for all the nations
belong to you!
The gods on trial:
We
are far more familiar with God speaking like this to human rulers—
but here God’s word comes to the
other gods of the divine council!
God is calling the other gods to trial; the charge is blunt:
How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?
The prescription for righting
this indictment is very blunt:
Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
maintain the right of the
lowly and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand
of the wicked."
But the gods don’t get it!
They use their power to
provide order in human life
to benefit the wicked!
And notice the
consequence: all the foundations of
the earth are shaken.
A note here on ancient world
views:
the ancient cosmologies of
the middle east—
including
that of the Hebrews—
understand the cosmos as order
brought out of the primordial chaos.
This is a theme that shows up
again and again in the Hebrew Bible.
The work of the gods:
The work of all the gods—including the
supreme God,
is
to build the foundations of a hospitable, livable world,
bringing
about that order
and continuing to act to protect it,
lest
the ancient chaos break through again and destroy all of life.
The image in this often used
phrase is one of tottering and collapse:
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
Let that sink in.
Think of bridges that shudder
and totter and fall down,
into the Mississippi River in Minnesota,
into the Tuo River in China;
think of a collapsing mine
where the supporting pillars of coal are
taken out
in a last gasp of greed,
think of towns shaken to the ground by an earthquake….
a hurricane.
This tottering of the
foundations is precisely the image that the psalmist uses.
In this psalm, the gods are
not protecting that foundational order--
instead of “delivering the weak and needy”
from the hands of the wicked,
the gods are weighing in on the side of the “sleek and
greedy”!
And that kind of injustice
unravels the very fabric of creation,
the
just and hospitable world which God has created
and chaos threatens life once again.
Now notice the ending of this
strange psalm: we have had the
indictment and the summary of the case; now we get the verdict: the death penalty.
The gods’ threat to the
stability of the foundations of the earth is too great for God to overlook.
The psalm ends with a
passionate cry for God’s intervention:
“Rise up, O God, judge the earth; for all the nations belong to
you!”
There is a strong similarity
between this sentiment
and Jesus’ plea in the Lord’s prayer:
“Your kingdom come, your will
be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (J. Clinton McCann, A
theological introduction to the book of Psalms, p. 124)
It is not hard to see
organizing principles and values
at work in our society,
things that offer form and
shape and meaning to our lives—
in other words, filling the god-mandate
of bringing and maintaining order out of chaos.
The question then becomes,
do these principles and
values serve the weak and needy
or are they skewed instead in favor of the “sleek and
greedy?”
I want to push on this tender
spot a bit with the encouragement of William Sloane Coffin who says,
”To be avoided at all costs is the solace
of opinion
without
the pain of thought.”
It seems to me that in our
time
we
need to enlarge our understanding of the “weak and needy”
to include the other inhabitants of our biosphere,
and
the complex webs of life on which we stand
and which we ignore to our own eventual
destruction.
The foundations of
God’s just and hospitable world are indeed shaken.
Fire on the earth:
My time is nearly over, but I
want to take a very quick look at the gospel reading. This is one of the hardest sayings of Jesus for Mennonites to
look at.
We like to think of Jesus as
bringing the way of peace,
not fire on the earth and the break up of families!
But as Quaker activist Tom
Mullen points out, “If you really want to cause conflict, work for peace.”
Jesus is not bringing a superficial peace;
this
is peace that demands justice at all levels.
And then at times it will be like a fire, like a
hammer that breaks a rock.
If we are to be genuine followers of Jesus, our
lives must demonstrate his passionate cry, “Your kingdom come, your will be
done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Hospitality:
This all seems pretty overwhelming.
But I want to suggest
that
there is one simple
and
astonishingly subversive and powerful way that we can begin.
This is a way that every one of us can use
to effectively and decisively work against
the
injustice of the gods of our time
the
injustices that are rocking the foundations
of
God’s hospitable world.
Let
me start with something that happened here at the church this week.
On
Tuesday morning, I came in to my office at 7:30, still a little sleepy…
and saw an envelope on the floor
that someone had stuck under my
door.
I
picked it up; it had a note on the back:
Hi, Linda—
Thanks sooo much for
letting us (AA) use the church. It
saved my life. Hope this little gift will
help the church. Thanks.
I
ripped the envelope open, expecting perhaps a 20 dollar bill. Inside was a check for one thousand dollars.
The
Christian church has used the word “salvation” for many centuries as a code
word for all that God has done for us in Christ.
Over
time the meaning of this word has shifted;
it has been used in exclusive,
limiting, even meanspirited ways;
it has often been split off from any
physical or emotional well being and
used only to refer to a spiritual salvation…
Too
often the word “salvation” is linked to an exclusive, nationalistic agenda;
forgetting that all the nations belong to [God]…
This
is a complete reversal of the holistic, grace filled good news
for all spheres of life
in which both the Hebrew and Christian
understandings
of salvation are founded.
I
wonder if we could put this code word to rest for a while
and begin using another word
to
talk about what God had done for us, desires for us,
is trying to build among us.
How
about hospitality?
How
about returning to the ancient Hebrew idea that the work of the gods—and God’s
people—is to craft and maintain a hospitable, just world for all its creatures?
Conclusion:
Using
hospitality as a frame makes it far harder
to split our concern into physical
and spiritual realms,
allowing
us to ignore one and render trite the other…
Using
hospitality as a frame causes us to scrutinize our interactions with all
those we meet differently.
And,
I think, it gives us a framework
to see what we offer in this church,
in this community
as
the countercultural, potentially subversive force
for the kingdom of God that it
is.
Friends,
people are being saved here.
People
are being connected, drawn into fellowship,
and into new ways of living.
It
may not always look like what we expect it to….
but
let’s not miss the movement of God because we’re stuck in an old framework,
using an old code word.
With
hospitality in our hearts and minds, let us share communion, a powerful symbol
of our friendship with Jesus Christ and our connection with all that God cares
for.