Ordinary Time, Summer 07

Cycle C, Proper 17

September 2, 2007

Title: Those who handle the law

Song leader: Reed

Worship leader: Jonathan

Speaker: Linda

Texts: Jeremiah 2:4-13; Psalm 81:1, 10-16; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1-14

Jeremiah 2:4 Hear the word of the LORD, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. 2:5 Thus says the LORD: What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves? 2:6 They did not say, "Where is the LORD who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that no one passes through, where no one lives?" 2:7 I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination. 2:8 The priests did not say, "Where is the LORD?" Those who handle the law did not know me; the rulers transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Baal, and went after things that do not profit. 2:9 Therefore once more I accuse you, says the LORD, and I accuse your children's children. 2:10 Cross to the coasts of Cyprus and look, send to Kedar and examine with care; see if there has ever been such a thing. 2:11 Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit. 2:12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the LORD, 2:13 for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.

Psalm 81:1 Sing aloud to God our strength; shout for joy to the God of Jacob…. 81:10 I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it. 81:11 "But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me. 81:12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels. 81:13 O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways! 81:14 Then I would quickly subdue their enemies, and turn my hand against their foes. 81:15 Those who hate the LORD would cringe before him, and their doom would last forever. 81:16 I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you."

Hebrews 13:1 Let mutual love continue. 13:2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. 13:3 Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. 13:5 Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, "I will never leave you or forsake you." 13:6 So we can say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?" 13:7 Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever….13:15 Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. 13:16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Luke 14:1 On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. 14:2 Just then, in front of him, there was a man who had dropsy. 14:3 And Jesus asked the lawyers and Pharisees, "Is it lawful to cure people on the sabbath, or not?" 14:4 But they were silent. So Jesus took him and healed him, and sent him away. 14:5 Then he said to them, "If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?" 14:6 And they could not reply to this. 14:7 When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. 14:8 "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; 14:9 and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. 14:10 But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 14:11 For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." 14:12 He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 14:13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14:14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

Contemporary quote: To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. --George Santayana

Preliminary notes:

Am really struck by how important it is in these texts that we get the reasons behind the law—God’s desire to give us abundant life (Jer. 2:7 I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things; Psa 81:10 I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it. 81:16 I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you."), life and healing that we must share with all others rather than hoard for ourselves or just those we judge to be “deserving” (14:13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind…. because they cannot repay you). So, if we “handle the law” without really getting God’s underlying generosity or desire for healing (Luke 14:1-6) we’ve really missed the Big Thing, the Big Love that feels every nuance of what we do to others. That is very clear in Hebrews’ follow-up to the very familiar “entertaining angels unawares” pericope: 13:3 Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. Wow.

Introduction:

We’ve usually had really boring messages on our answering machine—unlike some of you!

There has been at least one time

when I had to hang up and try again later

because I was laughing so hard at the creativity

of one of our youth that I couldn’t talk yet by the beep….

But nearly 9 years ago, during the time that

I was in conversation with the Hyde Park pastoral search committee

our family had a, shall I say, unique phone message,

completely unexpectedly….

We had had one of those great Midwest thunderstorms,

like the storm that went over Boise on Friday

except that it lasted for hours, not minutes;

the lights flickered repeatedly in the booming of the thunder

and we lost power completely for a quite awhile.

Someone called me from your search committee shortly after the storm

but I wasn’t home when the call came,

so I listened to the message and called right back.

Everything seemed fine;

whoever it was that I talked with—

and I don’t remember for sure who it was--

treated me with the same degree of laid-back courtesy and kindness

I had come to expect from this congregation.

A little later I was out again and called home to leave a message for Gary

and to my horror,

the message on our answering machine was Gary’s very standard message—but the storm had done something very weird to it…

it played so slow…

it sounded like someone with massive developmental delays.

I was horrified;

I thought that undoubtedly

whoever had left the message for me must have thought

that I was hiding some important information from you about our family….

my special-needs spouse or something….

I had Gary listen to it, too

and after the initial shock we laughed our heads off….

But whew! you all hired me, anyway…

and no one has ever commented on that message…

Just curious: does anybody remember it??

Here’s another memorable answering machine message:

“I am not available right now, but thank you for caring enough to call.

I am making some changes in my life.

Please leave a message after the beep.

If I do not return your call, you are one of the changes."

Change:

One of the themes that we’ll be working with this fall is change—

living with change, making changes, assessing change…

This afternoon, I’m heading to the monastery at Cottonwood to do a study retreat, preparing for our fall series on Jeremiah.

Why Jeremiah? And why now?

In the prophet Jeremiah’s time

the whole world was shifting,

changing in apocalyptic ways.

It was a time of empire,

a time of cultural and religious disintegration,

a time when tipping points for change

came so fast and suddenly

that only those very few who had correctly assessed

the unpopular,

the unthinkable

warning signals

only those few

were not shocked and blindsided

by the sudden collapse of the systems.

Abraham Heschel, a Jewish scholar,

remarks that a prophet “knows what time it is.”

Are we people who know what time it is?

Do we have prophetic voices that we need to be

listening for,

listening to

for help in discerning the many trembling, tottering

tipping points

of our time?

Change can come stunningly fast

when one of those tipping points

gets just one more feather-light touch—

as Idaho’s Senator Larry Craig can attest this week.

What a storm this has been for him,

a storm that has left his answering machine message

to the world completely garbled.

Not much to laugh at there, really, though,

the dozens of editorial cartoons notwithstanding…

Will Larry Craig be able to re-craft a message that is clear and coherent?

Will the massive changes sweeping his public and private life

result in growth-producing positive change for him? His family?

Or will it destroy him? And them?

We’ll have to wait and see.

Where is the Lord?

And, as an aside, how will it change us?

I’m not referring to the change in our senate representation

and the hopes that we may have

for the causes we support;

I’m wondering about how our response to Senator Craig will change us.

In a painfully clear way, these texts and the Craig situation have caught me in a sting operation…not in a bathroom but in an intimate part of my heart….

and I am compelled to make some changes.

I wasn’t planning to use the Hebrews lection today, but after the news of Senator Craig’s resignation came, I looked back at it and was struck again by the lines that follow the very familiar verses about love and hospitality:

13:1 Let mutual love continue. 13:2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

This we’ve probably all heard before.

But the text goes on to say:

13:3 Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.

And then it goes on still further to talk about sexual fidelity, and greed.

It’s easy to land on Senator Craig with judgment for hypocrisy;

it’s easy to say that he’s living in the consequences of the prison he’s built for himself.

And did that text mention torture?

Yep, Craig has supported the Administration’s efforts to soften

the US commitment

to abide by International Law on treatment of prisoners;

now he’s experiencing personally what it’s like to have your whole life

snatched awry because of being in the wrong place at the wrong time…

so even if he’s as innocent as he claims,

this is right in line with the Administration’s behavior

that he’s so fervently endorsed;

serves him right…doesn’t it?

Even Jeremiah is harsh in this passage

about those who handle the law, verse 8;

don’t we have the right and obligation

to hold lawmakers to a higher standard??

But let’s suspend our judgment and presumption of Senator Craig’s guilt for a moment and think about this a bit more in the light of Jeremiah’s words. Take a look at this passage; it’s printed on the front of your bulletin.

In these words of the prophet,

God is expressing dismay at the shocking idiocy of the people

who have discarded the one

who had brought them freedom and deliverance from slavery—

trading the gifts of God for ‘worthless things’.

The vivid image that Jeremiah uses to describe this is right at the end, verse 13:

for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.

In the middle of this passage, Jeremiah expresses God’s dismay at the mistakes of leadership.

When the people themselves forgot to ask,

“Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness…?”

the priests themselves—

tasked with keeping God in the hearts

and minds of the people—

did not ask this question, either.

It’s repeated in verse 8:

The priests did not say,

“Where is the Lord?”

Those who handle the law did not know me;

the rulers transgressed against me;

the prophets prophesied by Baal

and went after things that do not profit.

The whole system failed;

the Hebrews, even though they were a religious monarchy,

had, like Americans, a three part leadership:

instead of executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government,

· they had priests who maintained the religious law and rituals,

· rulers who ran the civil structures,

· and prophets who developed the ongoing vision and understanding of reality that shaped the nation’s direction.

In this one short verse, Jeremiah blasts all three as failures.

So, here is the sting operation that caught me this week:

The phrase from this text that has haunted me this week

alongside Larry Craig’s dilemma

is that question that was not asked, Where is the LORD?

Because this question was not asked,

Jeremiah sadly goes on in God’s voice to say:

Those who handle the law did not know me.

When people “handle a law” without truly knowing what –or in this case, who—

it is meant to represent,

it inevitably results in substituting

a cracked cistern that can’t hold water

for the springs and fountains of living water

that God holds out to us.

[The Apostle Paul works with this same thought in 2^nd Corinthians: The letter (of the law) kills, but the spirit gives life…]

Conclusion: So, the sting

Our question really isn’t “Where is the Lord in this for Larry Craig?”

It’s way too easy to sink into self-righteous judgment and even vengefulness. I found a website that had a compilation of dozens of cartoons from across the country lampooning him. Some were thoughtful, some were just plain angry, some mean-spirited. It’s so easy to go here.

But the only valid question for me this week really is,

“Where is the Lord in this speaking to YOU, Linda Nafziger-Meiser?”

How am I handling the law in a way which honors the gracious, just, forgiving Lord I claim to serve?

How am I handling the law in ways that are congruent with all that I understand to be the character of God?

And as the sting works down a little further, I realize that I also need to ask

How am I handling the law

in ways that take seriously

my own power and mandate as a Christian

to heal, to influence, to build up?

Maybe it’s time to rework the answering machine message I put out to the watching world…

Maybe Reed’s opening song today, #87, Great is the Lord, can give me some ideas….

Can people trust me to “be faithful and true”?

Does my mercy prove my love?