Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Sunday, February 15 2009
2 Kings 5:1-14
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45
Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen
First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I knew a girl in college who would never allow a guy to pay for anything, particularly if they were out on a date. She didn’t want to be vulnerable, didn’t ever want to feel obligated, so she used her money as a shield to keep herself in control of whatever they did together. She liked knowing that she didn’t have to depend on anyone else. When dealing with guys, she was a control freak. Money is a potent form of power, and she knew how to use it.
Naaman wanted to use his riches to be in control, too. Being told of a prophet of God who might be able to cure his disease, Naaman’s first action wasn’t to go to the prophet and ask for healing. No, Naaman wanted healing on his own terms. So he went to his king, and got a huge sum of money to bribe the king of Israel into helping. Naaman also got a letter from his king to the king of Israel that was harsh enough to panic the king of Israel, and a powerful military escort. Chariots were the tanks of their day, the most effective way of projecting power on a battlefield, requiring much money and skill to maintain and use. It was the old carrot and stick approach: if you do what I want and heal me, Naaman said, you get a king’s ransom in gold, silver, and costly garments. If you don’t heal me, my king-who is more powerful than you, with a larger and better equipped army-will be very unhappy. So you’d better do what I want. Naaman demanded a miracle of healing, rather than ask for God’s grace. He wanted God to work by his rules, rather than try to work by God’s rules.
The prophet Elisha heard about it, and called Naaman to be cured, telling him simply to wash in the Jordan river. Naaman should have been happy, right? He got what he wanted: to be cured from a horrible, disfiguring, wasting disease. But no. Instead of being grateful, Naaman was insulted that the prophet’s instructions were so simple. Naaman was a powerful man, a rich man, come with a huge entourage and lavish bribes to demand a huge miracle. He wanted a big show, something worthy of his status, something that he could do to heal himself. He wanted something that acknowledged his power and that of the king he served. Aram, what we now call Syria, was mighty and rich, much more so than the piddling little country of Israel. Coming to puny Israel for help, admitting that they had something Aram didn’t, was already an affront to Naaman’s pride. Then to have the prophet of God refuse to deal with him directly, refuse to play to Naaman’s pride, refuse to give him some Herculean task and showy ritual to mark the importance of the occasion-that was intolerable. To have come all that way, just to be told to bathe in a river, something he could have done at home? Naaman wasn’t going to put up with that. He turned away and almost rejected the miraculous healing God was offering him. He had to be convinced to allow God to help him! It seems incredible to us, almost unbelievable, that anyone would reject God’s help and healing because their pride was offended. It seems incredible that anyone would turn away from God with the gift they so desperately need right there in front of them. And yet, we do it all the time.
Nobody likes feeling vulnerable. We like to feel we have control over our own destinies. Think about how much respect we give to “self-made men,” those who take a bad situation and use their own abilities and ambition to rise above it, creating a better life for themselves. We Americans also tend to take a lot of pride in being self-reliant, take care of ourselves. Think about how much time we spend planning out our futures. Think about how afraid people have been lately about the economy, about the threat of lost jobs and pay cuts. Is it really about money, at the heart of it? Or is it about something deeper, about knowing that one of the foundations of our society is shaky and unpredictable? Even those people with relatively secure jobs are afraid and unsure. People who have already been laid off, whose lives have been completely changed by forces beyond their control-I can only imagine what they must be feeling.
I know when I feel vulnerable, I try not to show it, try to pretend everything’s going fine, try to take control of the things that are most important to me. Like Naaman, when I’m weak I try to look strong, try to keep the situation in terms that are familiar to me, on my own home turf. For Naaman, the home turf was wealth and military posturing. For me, the home turf is academic debate and nitpicking. There are many defense mechanisms, ways to try to compensate for feeling weak and vulnerable, but everyone has them. Sometimes, we don’t even realize we’re using them. What are yours?
Admitting that someone or something else has power over you means that you are not in control. It means that you are vulnerable to them. It can be very scary. But here’s the thing: no matter what we do, no matter how much power we have, we are not in control of the world. God is. God is the one who created the world, who redeemed it through death on a cross, who brings us out of the pit of sin and despair and makes us whole. None of that is our own doing. All of it belongs to God and is done by God. It is not our will that determines the course of our lives, but God’s will.
But do we really believe that God is in control? We say it all the time in worship, in hymns, we read it in the Bible and hear it preached. We pray it in the Lord’s Prayer, asking for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. But all too often, we don’t mean what we say. When things go right, we look back at all the little things that happened, everything we did, that helped make things turn out the way we wanted them to. We attribute things to chance, luck, other people, everyone but God. We don’t look for all the little ways God has intervened to help and guide us, the ways God has shaped events. When things go wrong, we want God to step into our lives and fix everything, but fix it on our terms. God gets the blame for tragedies-children dying, jobs lost, homes destroyed-but we don’t often give God the credit for all the things that go well. Like Naaman, we try to keep control of our lives by keeping God’s presence within boundaries of what we consider acceptable. And it’s a lot easier for us than for Naaman; we don’t have a prophet of God like Elisha to point out our mistake and make us relate to God on God’s terms rather than our own.
We live in a world broken by sin. I don’t mean just individual sins, bad things done by individuals. Sin has invaded every aspect of our lives. Each individual sin takes us further away from how God wants us to live our lives. All those little-and big-things we do wrong add together to create ever larger problems. Because we are flawed and sinful people, the things we create-like institutions, groups, and cultures-are also flawed and sinful. Just as our bodies get sick because of diseases and germs, our minds and souls get sick because of sin. But while our bodies can fight off minor ailments and doctors can cure us of many serious illnesses, the only one who can save us from sin is God. Like leprosy, sin is a long-term wasting disease that affects our entire life, something we can’t cure ourselves. Like Naaman, our only hope is the grace of God, a miracle of healing given for us. Like Naaman, we need to be washed clean.
But like Naaman, we want to be in control. We don’t want to admit we have a problem, don’t want to admit we can’t fix it ourselves, don’t want to admit we’re vulnerable. We come up with reasons why we don’t need God’s help. We convince ourselves we’re not doing that badly, that we’re no worse off than anyone else. We worship God on Sundays and try to leave him safely in church behind us when we leave instead of looking for his influence and guidance in our daily lives, until something bad happens and we want God to fix it just the way we prefer. We turn away from the love and salvation God offers us through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, just like Naaman turned away from the healing he was offered in the waters of the Jordan river.
It’s hard to be vulnerable, to put our trust in God to take care of us and heal us. It’s hard to admit that we need God’s grace so desperately. But here’s the good news: we have been washed clean by the waters of baptism and redeemed out of the hands of sin and death by our Lord’s sacrifice. Even living in a world broken by sin, even when we turn away from God, God never turns away from us. Baptism isn’t just a matter of splashing a bit of water on a baby’s head. Baptism is a fundamental cleansing, a drowning of the old, sinful self. Each day of our lives as baptized children of God, we die to sin and rise to new life in Christ Jesus. We are sinners, yes, but we are also saints claimed and made holy and whole by God. This is why for the last few weeks we’ve been using the Remembrance of Baptism in place of the Confession of Sins we normally use. It’s a reminder that baptism isn’t just a once-in-a-lifetime event but a daily reality, a way of living in God’s grace our whole life long.
We don’t need to be afraid to let God work within our lives. We don’t need to be afraid to admit we need God’s help. We don’t need defense mechanisms to try and prove we have control or hide our own fears. We don’t need to control God’s actions, because God loves us and cares for us and won’t abandon us. Even when things aren’t going the way we want them to, even when we’re afraid of the way things are going, God is still with us, still healing us from our sin and working to make us whole. God washes us clean from the illness of sin in the waters of baptism. All we need do is open our hearts and minds to God’s work in our lives and stop turning away.
Sermon: Christ the King
December 2, 2008
Sorry for posting this a week late, but I was a bit busy with Thanksgiving last week.
Christ the King
Sunday, November 23 2008
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Psalm 95
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25:31-46
Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen
First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today is the last Sunday of the church year; next week is the first Sunday of Advent, when we begin preparations for the coming of our Lord. Today, we celebrate the fact that Jesus Christ is our King, ruler of heaven and earth. We are citizens of two worlds, of this world we live in now and of the world to come, when Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. Jesus Christ is Lord of all. Jesus Christ is the king of both heaven and earth. It’s easy to imagine Christ as King of heaven, where he reigns in glory with angels and pearly gates and all that. It’s a lot harder to imagine Christ as king of this world we live in today.
What does it mean that Christ is King? What kind of a King is he? When I think of kings in this world, I think of grand castles and historic wars and riches and crown jewels locked safely behind glass. Most kings in the world today are ceremonial figureheads, like Queen Elizabeth of England. She comes out, she waves at crowds, she makes speeches, she travels the world, but in the end the country she rules is actually governed by elected officials in Parliament. Then there are all the kings in history, who actually did rule their people. Some were good, some were bad, but all had flaws when you take a close look at them. They favored the rights of the rich and powerful and ignored the needs of the poor, they played favorites, they started stupid and tragic wars, they lived in lavish palaces while the majority of their people lived in squalor and filth, they had so much power and wealth and used it to get more power and wealth. Even David and Solomon, the two greatest kings in the Bible, had significant problems. David’s adultery and poor parenting skills caused a vicious civil war, and his son Solomon the Wise raised taxes and forced labor levies so high to pay for his building projects that on his death the kingdom of Israel-God’s chosen people-were permanently split in two. That split never healed because a few centuries of rule by bad kings later, the Northern Kingdom was conquered by Assyria and taken off as captives and was never heard from again. If that’s the legacy of a good king, well, I can see why our forefathers rebelled and threw out the English king in favor of a democratic government. It’s hard to imagine a king being a good thing, hard to think of Christ as a king, when you think of all the bad things kings have done.
Except our democratically-elected political leaders don’t have that great a track record, either. Washington, Jefferson, and the rest of the founding fathers owned slaves and left in place a system of slavery that was horribly unjust and cruel and caused a massive civil war for their children and grandchildren to fight. Lincoln had no plans for the future besides winning the Civil War, and his lack of planning led to problems with Reconstruction after his death. Our presidents have a better track run over the long term than the kings and queens of many other nations, but that’s not saying much. All leaders of nations, whatever they call themselves and however they came to power, have fallen short of their promises and caused problems for their people. Yet they keep making new promises about what they’re going to accomplish as leaders, each promise more lavish than the rest. And we follow them, hoping they’ll fix all the things that are wrong with the world, all the mistakes their predecessors made. We hope they’ll make things better for us, make a better world, fix the wrongs and injustices that affect our daily lives and prevent new ones from occurring.
On November 5, the day after the recent election, I visited a few shut-ins, and the conversation naturally turned to politics. The Obama supporters spoke as if Obama was a savior who would right all the wrongs in America and in the world. The McCain supporters spoke as if America was doomed and would crumble and fall within the next four years. Now, politics is a touchy and dangerous subject for any pastor to discuss with parishioners, and I’m not quite comfortable yet with where the boundaries are. But one thing I know for sure is that no matter which political party won this or any election, no matter which candidate is installed in office, the world is in God’s hands and will always be in God’s hands, difficult as that can be to remember at times. And so we come back to the question: what does it mean that Christ is King of this world as well as the next?
In the first lesson, the leaders of the world-particularly the kings of Israel and Judah-have failed at their task as leaders and shepherds of their people. The people are scattered and divided, the rich have gotten greedy and the poor have gotten trampled. There is no justice anywhere. The ones with God-given gifts to take care of and protect others have used those gifts to make themselves even richer and stronger at the expense of the ones they’re supposed to be protecting. It’s not their riches God objects to-it’s the way they’ve used those riches to do the exact opposite of what they should be doing. The result? Everyone has suffered. The nation has been conquered by foreigners and everyone-rich and poor alike-has been carried off into exile. God sent the prophet Ezekiel to bring comfort: exile is not permanent. The injustices that plague Israel will be redressed, and a new shepherd, a new king, will be given to lead them. This king, however, will not be like their old leaders who brought them to this low point. This new David will be a true shepherd-he will take care of the people with justice, and both rich and poor will be fed and protected and cared for. This new David is Christ, the Messiah, king of heaven and earth. What does it mean that Christ is King? Christ is not just a ceremonial king, there to be brought out for rituals and holidays and ignored the rest of the time. He has true power of both judgment and protection. Christ’s kingship means that the old way of doing things, the way of life in which value is calculated by riches and power, will come to an end. In its place will come a world in which all people are valued, in which everyone gets a fair chance and all will be cared for. Christ’s kingship means that justice isn’t about who’s got the biggest army or the most money, and it means that no matter how bad things seem to be now, this world is not the end.
But justice can’t happen without judgment, and that means that injustices can’t be swept away under the rug or excused as simply the way things are. People need to be held accountable for the things they’ve done, good and bad. God’s justice can’t be bribed, or swayed by politics, or biased in any way. God knows what is in our hearts and minds, God knows what we’ve done even better than we do, and God will judge everyone with greater justice than any human court could ever hope to do. Let me repeat that: God will judge. Not us, God.
In the second lesson, Jesus talks about the judgment that will happen when he comes again. The story is simple: everyone will be judged and sorted into two groups. The ones who are righteous-the sheep-will go into the Kingdom of heaven, and those who are not righteous-the goats-will be sent away to eternal punishment. This parable is pretty well known. It’s a common subject of sermons and Bible study classes. It’s an excellent way to show what God’s justice looks like: when we see someone in trouble, and we have the power to help, we should do it. We see the face of God not in the kings and rulers and powerful and wealthy of this world, but in those who are the most vulnerable. We see the face of God in people who are hungry, thirsty, alone, naked, sick, imprisoned. We have been given many gifts, not just of money but of time and talents as well, and we should use them to take care of those who honestly cannot take care of themselves. This is what Christ our King commands. This is the standard against which he will judge us.
And again I point out: the standard against which Christ will judge us, not the standard we will use to judge others. Here’s what most people miss when they read this parable: the sheep don’t think they’re sheep and the goats don’t think they’re goats. The sheep are honestly surprised to hear that they’ve been serving Christ in their daily lives, and the goats honestly can’t think of a time when they haven’t served. The problem is that the goats were serving the wrong things-and didn’t know it. They got so caught up in what they thought needed to be done, they forgot to ask what God thought needed to be done, and how God wanted them to go about doing it.
It’s kind of like when I was a kid and I would take care of my younger brother on Saturdays while Mom and Dad were at work. We had a list of chores to accomplish, and it was my responsibility to see to it the chores got done and that we both did our fair share. Now, I was a fairly bossy girl, and my brother has always been laid back, and so normally he’d just go along with whatever I told him to do, and normally I tried to divide things relatively equally. But sometimes I’d get so caught up in the fact that I was in charge that I would try to make my brother do a lot more than his fair share-and then try and micromanage how he did it. Well, I never got away with it for very long-eventually, even my laid-back brother would call Mom and Dad to complain, and I would get in trouble. Even if the chores got done like Mom and Dad wanted, they didn’t get done how Mom and Dad wanted when I made my brother do most of the work, and they got done in ways that harmed the relationship between myself and my brother. Just as it was easy for me to think I was doing what my parents wanted by bossing my brother around and making him do most of the work, it’s easy for us to arrange things the way we want them and justify it by thinking we’re doing what God wants. It’s easy to fall back into the habits of power-seeking, of seeing things through the eyes of this world instead of through the eyes of Christ, and not even realize we’re doing it.
That’s a scary thought. If it’s that easy to forget about the true justice of Christ, if we can honestly think we’re serving God when we really aren’t, what’s to stop us from being goats? How can we make sure we’re headed for eternal life rather than eternal punishment? We do our best, but what if that isn’t enough? Well, the bad news is, our best isn’t enough and there’s no way we can make sure we’re sheep and not goats. We can’t judge anyone, not ourselves, not others. The power of judgment belongs exclusively to Christ our King, who isn’t blinded by power and money and all the things we use to decide status. But the good news is that Christ exercises that judgment along with mercy, in grace and love. Christ uses his kingship for protection and care. As sinners, we stand condemned before the throne. But Christ loves us still. And that is where we place our trust and our hope of salvation, not in our deeds that often go wrong, but in the grace of God.
Jesus Christ is our king both in this world and the next. Doing good things isn’t just about salvation. We do good works because our God and King desires justice in this world, and mercy, and he wants to work through us to accomplish it. We do good works because our God cares just as much about the weak as he does the strong. Christ can be seen in the hungry, the thirsty, the lonely, the naked, the sick, the dying. The world may have forgotten them, but God hasn’t. And neither should we.
Jesus Christ is Lord of all. The rulers of this world have the power of laws and armies and bureaucracy in their control, but Christ is still the one in ultimate control. Things may seem grim or depressing when we see all that’s wrong with the world, all the things that we as human beings have done wrong. But Christ doesn’t exercise that power through a show of riches and might. He rules by bringing justice and grace to the world, to those who need it the most. He rules by gathering up the lost and forsaken, by being a good shepherd to his people. Thanks be to God.
On righteousness
October 30, 2008
Reformation Sunday
Sunday, October 26
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36
Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen
First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today is Reformation Sunday. Four hundred and ninety-one years ago this Friday, Martin Luther nailed a list of ninety-five things he thought the church was doing wrong on the church door in Wittenburg, hoping initially only for a theological debate that might reform the church he served. The lessons for today are taken from those texts that were especially valuable to Luther in his realization that the theology of the medieval Roman Catholic church had serious problems in need of reformation. We celebrate this day as a festival of the church to remind ourselves that since the church is made up of humans who have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, it is in constant need of reformation and renewal.
There is a question in the readings today. It stands behind Jeremiah’s vision of the future, and behind Paul’s vision of what Christ has done and is doing in our midst, and behind Jesus’ rebuke of the Jews who had believed in him. The question is this: we are all sinners, so how do we get a right relationship with God?
Israel had been created and formed by God throughout its entire history, and yet by Jeremiah’s day they had strayed so far from the path God taught them that they were destroyed. God was with them in their suffering and promised to rebuild them, but Jeremiah wanted to know what was to keep them from going so far astray a second time? God’s answer was a new covenant, in which God’s commands, God’s words, weren’t just something heard during worship but were so deeply a part of the community of believers that they could never be forgotten or discarded again. Not just the rules and regulations, but knowledge of how to live a happy, healthy, whole life in community with God and with all believers. This new covenant would be given not because they earned it or deserved it, but because they needed it. This gift from God is what would save Israel from another destruction and exile.
Centuries later, the new covenant was created in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul wrote a letter to the church in Rome explaining what that meant not just for Jews but for everyone, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. No amount of external rules and regulations can keep us safe from sin. Even though we try our hardest to make up for it by following the laws as best we can, we can’t possibly do enough good works to earn our own salvation. The good news of Christ Jesus is that God loves us anyway, and created a new covenant with us to save us. Jesus took the punishment for our sins as his own, and suffered and died so that we would not have to. As baptized children of God, we are tied to his death and resurrection, and through his sacrifice we are given freedom and grace. Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit live within us and surround us, showing us how to life happy, healthy, whole lives in community with God and with all believers. We have nothing to boast about; it’s not our own actions or beliefs that save us but God’s actions and the faith he gives us.
It’s a wonderful thing, to be saved by God. Unfortunately, we often take that salvation for granted. We have been claimed and saved by God, but we aren’t perfect. The final destruction of sin and death won’t happen until Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead. Until that time, we are caught in between sin and salvation, unable to free ourselves from bondage to sin and yet constantly claimed and forgiven by God, renewed in faith and life. We are, in Luther’s words, both saint and sinner at the same time. Being both saint and sinner is not a comfortable thing to be. We don’t like to think of ourselves as sinners; we prefer to focus on our good deeds, on God’s love for us, and forget the bad things we do. I was participating in a bible study two years ago, when a woman said she didn’t see why we had to start every service with the confession and forgiveness—after all, she wasn’t a sinner, she was a good woman who followed the ten commandments and took care of her family and worked hard, so why should she have to confess anything?
I didn’t quite know what to say. I mean, I know that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but at the same time I understood where she was coming from. I don’t worship other gods, I don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, I worship on Sundays, I honor my parents, I don’t kill, I don’t commit adultery, I don’t steal, I don’t lie, and I do my best never to covet anything. I’m not perfect, but it sure seems like I’ve got the major stuff covered, right? And there are a lot of people out there, many of them in this church right now, who could say the same thing. It’s so easy to start thinking like the Jews who believed in Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson. “I’m a child of God, who follows the commandments and isn’t a slave to sin. What do you mean ‘you will be made free’? What have I done that needs saving?” And yet, according to Paul, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, including me and everyone else who does their best to obey the commandments. What are we doing wrong?
Let’s start from the beginning. The first commandment says “You shall have no other gods but me.” It sounds easy enough. Who here has ever worshipped, say, Buddha? That’s easy enough to avoid. But considering that today is Reformation Sunday, let’s check out what Luther has to say. In the section on the first commandment in the Large Catechism, Luther asks this question: what does it mean to have a god? Think about it. What does it mean to have a god? Besides the obvious things like coming to church on Sundays, how does believing in God and being a Christian affect you and your daily life? According to Luther, a “god” is what we look to for all good and in which we find refuge in all need. To have a god is … to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart. And that’s the problem, the thing that makes the first commandment so very difficult to follow no matter how good we think we’re being. We may not consciously worship other gods, but it’s very easy to slip into trusting something in this world that we can see and hear and touch more than we trust God.
For me, I know I’m a smart, competent woman. The temptation for me is to put my trust in my own abilities and intelligence, instead of in God. I can think my way out of most problems: figure out what’s wrong, figure out how to fix it, and go out and do what needs to be done. I believe in God, but I also believe I can handle most things. When I need something, when I have a problem, my first instinct isn’t to turn to God for help and guidance, it’s to look for what I can do to fix it. And I never realized how little trust I had in God until I spent last summer working as a chaplain at a mental hospital. You see, the thing about mental illness severe enough to need hospitalization is that you can’t fix it. You can’t think your way through it. Even with the best medication and counseling available to them, the people in that hospital will have to struggle with their illness for the rest of their lives. There was nothing I could do to fix them, or help them fix themselves. Going there ever day, knowing I could do nothing, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. It forced me to realize just how much I relied on myself and how little I relied on God. As the summer went on, I had to learn to open myself to the possibility of God working in and through me and in the lives of the staff and patients at that hospital, and put my faith and trust in God instead of in myself. I could not help them. But God could.
Self-reliance is one form of idolatry that Americans are particularly prone to, but not the only one. Look at the political campaigns going on in our country right now. Both sides believe that if they are elected they can fix all the problems in America. Their ultimate trust and faith is in their ideology and political proposals. Or how about money? If there’s one thing that the marked fluctuations and economic problems of the past few weeks have proven, it’s that there are a lot of Americans who put their ultimate faith and trust in the economy instead of in God. To listen to people talk, in our community and in the national news, you would have thought the whole world was coming to an end. What will we do if our investments aren’t worth as much? What will we do if we don’t get a raise this year? What will we do if we don’t have the money to take the vacation we wanted? What will we do if we get laid off? How will we live? As a culture, our love of money and financial security has become the driving force in our lives. Let me be very clear here: being smart, or interested in politics, or having money are not the problem. The problem is when we put more trust in our abilities, politics, and money than we do in God.
The question in today’s lessons is the question for our age as well. I’ve only talked about one of the commandments today, but when you truly look at each of the commandments, at the spirit of the law and not just the letter of it, each one is just as difficult to follow. Paul was right. We are all sinners. We are all slaves to sin. If we can’t even keep the first commandment, how can we possibly make a right relationship with God and our fellow believers?
The answer is simple. We can’t. But God can. We are slaves to sin, but if the son of God makes us free then we are free indeed. God has made a new covenant with us, a new promise, to be our God and make us God’s people. Through Jesus Christ our sins have been forgiven and we have been made whole. Not because we’ve earned it—we haven’t—but because God loves us in spite of our sin and loves us no matter what we do. The God who created us and gave us every good thing in the world, the God we turn away from every day with each sin, loves us enough to die for our sake that we might be saved even though we are still sinners. This is a gift we could never earn, and we cannot pay back. The only thing we can do is rejoice, and open our hearts and minds to the presence of God in us and among us, and allow ourselves to be re-formed in God’s image and in God’s steadfast love.
Against Exploitation
October 7, 2008
Lectionary 26 / Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
Sunday, September 28
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
Psalm 25:1-8
Philippians 2:1-13
Matthew 21:23-32
Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen
First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA
To hear this sermon preached, right click and save as.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Here’s an interesting bit of Bible trivia: today’s second reading has a name all of its own. Theologians call Philippians 2:6-11 the “kenosis hymn.” “Kenosis” comes from a Greek word meaning “to empty,” and it’s called a “hymn” because it’s probably a quote from something the early Christians sang or spoke in worship, something that may have been in use even before Paul became Christian and started his missionary work. Given that Paul’s letters are the oldest things in the New Testament, older than any of the Gospels, these six verses may be the oldest Christian text we have.
“Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death– even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
As one part of the triune God, Jesus could have had anything he wanted. Anything at all. Think about that for a second. If you could have anything you wanted, what would you do with it? If it were me, I like to think I’d start off with the big stuff—world peace, for example, make everybody who was fighting stop. Then how about ending hunger, disease, injury, all those problems the human race has been struggling with since there was a human race. And if I really could have everything I wanted, I’d make sure my own life was as comfortable as possible while I fixed all of the world’s problems. I’d have a nice house, with a cutting-edge home entertainment center and all my friends and family living close by. I’d be great at every sport and every art without ever having to practice. My favorite television series would never be cancelled, my favorite authors would come out with a new book every week, and I’d never have to work or cook or clean ever again. I’m sure you can all imagine what you’d do if you could have anything you wanted. In America, we’re good at imagining that. Somehow, the pursuit of happiness has turned into the pursuit of having more stuff than anyone else.
There’s a lot of exploitation in the world today, and we’re so used to it we don’t even notice most of it. Exploitation means making the most of what you have, using whatever it takes to get what you want. Our life experiences teach us early that if you have something, use it, especially money. If you don’t, you’ll never get anywhere in life, and people will probably take advantage of you. We associate being humble with being humiliated. To quote a song from the musical “Camelot,” “It’s not the Earth the meek inherit, it’s the dirt.” If you don’t think highly of yourself, and make sure everyone else thinks highly of you, too, you run the risk of being used or ignored. We are a consumer society; almost everything is for sale, if you’re willing and able to pay the price. Our entertainment is paid for with advertising that is designed to convince us we can’t live without whatever it is they’re selling. There are more shopping malls in America than high schools. Dollar value determines worth; it defines how we perceive everything around us, including right and wrong. Think about it: how often do you hear people use the terms “moral” or “ethical,” particularly about themselves or their children? You’re more likely to hear people talk about teaching their children family “values.” Values, a money word, as if you could tally up your choices on a spreadsheet and turn them over to an accountant for a cost-benefit analysis of doing the right thing.
We exploit the world around us. Instead of taking care of the planet God gave us, we use it up and throw it away. Americans are five percent of the world’s population but consume twenty-four percent of the world’s energy and one third of the world’s timber and paper. As a nation, we throw out 200,000 tons of edible food each day while ten million people world-wide die of hunger related causes each year. We throw away enough paper & plastic cups, forks and spoons every year to circle the equator 300 times.
We exploit our bodies. Sex is for sale, and sex sells; I’m not talking about literal prostitution here, but take a good look at the average music video. Or take a look at the billboard on Route 30 where a woman looks like she’s about to flash people. In 2006 a song about pimps won the Oscar for Best Song, and the word “pimp” is now a slang term for something really cool. And then we wonder why one in six women—and one in thirty-three men—will be sexually assaulted during their lifetimes.
We exploit our knowledge. Most scientific research is funded by people looking for specific, tangible results—pharmaceutical companies looking for medicines they can patent and sell for a profit, for example, or chemical engineers looking for new fuel sources. And those who have knowledge and education often look down on those who don’t as being less intelligent, or use their knowledge to make themselves look impressive or authoritative. I did it at the beginning of this sermon, even—did you really need to know this passage is called the “kenosis hymn”?
Things were little different in Jesus and Paul’s day. The Roman Empire was really good at exploiting people, through slavery and other more subtle ways. They were equally good at exploiting the environment and knowledge, using their engineering skills to create an infrastructure of roads, aqueducts, and public buildings that enabled them to conquer and rule what was then the known world. The high priests and elders of the Jewish temple used their social position and their knowledge of Jewish religious rituals and laws to ensure their own position. They used their position to mediate between the Roman Empire which wasn’t too keen on subjects who refused to worship the Roman Gods and Jewish religious fanatics who thought they could drive out the mightiest empire in the world. It’s no wonder that the chief priests and elders didn’t recognize God in the form of a man who didn’t care about building his social position or working his way up the established religious channels. And it’s no wonder that the Roman citizens in the city of Philippi needed Paul to remind them that Christ Jesus, God in human form, worked through mutual love and compassion, not exploitation, through humility and not arrogance. It’s no wonder that we need to hear the same lesson again today.
Jesus humbled himself, instead of exploiting what he had. If Jesus had wanted to use his godhood, he would have used it more wisely and less selfishly than you or I would, but surely he could have saved the world in a more immediate and less painful way than crucifixion. Wouldn’t it have been easier to simply destroy all weapons, cure all diseases, feed all the hungry people, and then not let us sin any more? Make us righteous by not letting us be anything else? No need for Jesus to become human, with all the frailties that includes. No need to suffer and die. No need to do anything but stay comfortably in heaven, pulling strings here on Earth to make sure everyone does what they’re supposed to do.
But Jesus did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited. He did not take advantage of it; he did not use it to force the world—force us—to be what he wanted us to be. Instead, Jesus took human form, became like us, shared the kind of experiences we have as humans. Instead of doing things to us, Jesus chose to work for us and through us, creating a relationship with us that can sustain us in the darkest of times because it’s based on love and compassion and a real understanding of what our lives are like. Through that relationship, we can be transformed. God doesn’t want our lives to be about exploitation, of ourselves or others or anything. God doesn’t want us to spend our lives worrying about getting ahead. Instead, God wants us to model our lives on the kind of love Jesus showed us: the kind of love that puts the needs of others above our own comfort, the kind of love that is full of compassion and sympathy, the kind of love that builds us up not just as individuals, but as a community. The kind of love that makes us truly the body of Christ.
There is a difference between humbleness and humiliation. Humbleness is when we let go of our arrogance and admit our flaws. Humbleness is when we stop being selfish and start thinking about others. It’s when we admit that we really do need God’s love and forgiveness. It can be a scary thing, to admit that we need help, that we can’t do it alone. But unless we are willing to admit our need, to make ourselves humble, we will stay trapped in the web of exploitation that surrounds us. Until we admit we need God’s help, we can’t let him in to our hearts and minds to work in us and through us.
We worship a God who loved us so much that he emptied himself and took on human form, who became humble and suffered for our sake, who died to save us from our sins and rose from the dead that we too might be raised. It flies in the face of conventional wisdom and behavior, but as his followers we also are called to love and be humble and place the needs of others above our own comfort. We are called to live lives of service and love for others, where justice and relationships are more important than exploitation and our own comfort. It’s not an easy path to follow. But the good news is that we don’t have to follow it alone. Christ Jesus has been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and will always be by our side, helping and guiding us on our way.
Lectionary 22 / Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
Sunday, August 31
Jeremiah 15:15-21
Psalm 26:1-8
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28
Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen
First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is a banner that hangs over the door to the gym in Talmadge Middle School in Independence, Oregon. It’s one of many inspirational quotes and slogans that decorate the halls of that school. It says: “What is right is not always popular; what is popular is not always right.” The banner was there every day of the three years I went to school there, but few of the students ever bothered to read it, or apply it to their lives if they did. I know I read it, decided it was true, and promptly forgot about it.
Doing the right thing is hard, when it’s not the popular thing. It’s much easier, not to mention a lot more fun, to go with the flow and do what everyone else is doing. It’s safer, too—no danger of looking stupid or preachy or offending people. And let’s face it: most of the choices we have to make every day, most of the things we do, aren’t exactly life-shattering choices. Nobody lives or dies, nobody gets rich or poor, nobody’s soul is saved or lost. We may not always do things that are exactly right, but they’re not exactly wrong, either. The banner above the gym door is true, but it’s not what we want to hear.
Jeremiah lived by that truth. He’d been called by God to be a prophet, to bring God’s word to the people of Israel. It’s been said that a prophet’s job is to speak truth to power, even when that’s not what the power wants to hear. Jeremiah went one better: he spoke the truth to everyone. And no one wanted to hear it. Our first lesson today comes from one of Jeremiah’s laments. He complains that people are persecuting him because he’s speaking the words God has told him to speak. Jeremiah was attacked and accused of treason for doing what God wanted him to. But in today’s lesson, God tells him that this persecution isn’t going to last forever; in the end, God’s will will be done, and Jeremiah will be saved. More than that, eventually the people of Israel will heed Isaiah’s words and return to doing the right thing, to behaving like the people of God, and not just paying lip service to their faith while doing the easy thing, the popular thing.
It must have seemed an incredible, almost unbelievable, idea. Israel had been doing the popular thing for a long time. They’d demanded that God give them a king so they could be “like their neighbors,” and although David and Solomon and a few others had been good rulers, most had been utter disasters. Israel had focused on trade and their economy, and they’d produced an upper class that could rival the neighboring countries in wealth, but at the cost of trampling on the poor and oppressed. They’d learned to play power-politics, staking their safety and freedom on military alliances and power blocs, playing one neighboring nation off against another. Some of them had even adopted the gods of the nations around them. Most people worshipped as God had commanded, gave lip service to God’s laws, and went on with their daily lives as if it made no difference. Their minds were set on human things. God had brought them out of Egypt and freed them from slavery to be a chosen people, holy, a royal priesthood, but they behaved no differently than anybody else.
It’s no wonder they didn’t like Jeremiah; he called them on everything they were doing wrong, and told them that this time, they weren’t going to escape the consequences of their actions. It wasn’t what they wanted to hear, and it wasn’t what they wanted to believe. Most of the Israelites weren’t bad people, after all, and most of them worshipped God according to Israel’s traditions. Surely they hadn’t done anything bad enough to warrant conquest. Surely something would happen to turn the tide and restore Israel to safety and prominence. It’s true, the northern kingdom of Judah had already been conquered, and the Babylonians were right outside their gates; there was still a good chance they might be bribed, or perhaps an alliance with Egypt would provide the military might to drive the invaders from their lands.
I’m sure the people of Israel felt they had many good reasons to disregard Jeremiah’s warnings. What good would repentance and changing their way of life, their way of thinking, do against an invading army? They went about their business as usual, ignored the word of God in their midst, and hoped for the best. But in the end, all their power politics and riches couldn’t save them. They were conquered by Babylon and taken into exile. Many fled to Egypt to escape; Jeremiah wanted to stay in Israel but was forced to leave his homeland for Egypt. God’s assurances that all would be well in the end must have been even more unbelievable then than they had been when they were made.
Like the Israelites of Jeremiah’s day, Peter, too, had his mind set on human things. You may recall from last week’s Gospel that Peter has just confessed that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the living God. It’s a profound insight; it’s the first time in Matthew’s gospel that anyone but the narrator has called Jesus that. You’d think that the person who is spiritually-minded enough to realize that just a few verses earlier would get what Jesus is trying to say now, but Peter is still too focused on human things. According to the beliefs of the time, the Messiah was supposed to be a political figure, a king just like his ancestor David who would drive out the Romans and their puppet-kings and restore Israel to its former glory as a nation. True, there would be some religious changes, but in support of the political restoration, not in place of it. Suffering? Death? What kind of revolutionary goes in predicting that ahead of time? What kind of revolutionary counts that as success? And even if you ignore the political aspects of the Messiah’s coming, how could suffering and death possibly be according to the will of God?
Peter’s not alone in thinking that, of course; how many people today assume that when something bad happens, it means God has abandoned us? How many people assume that if God loves you and you have the right faith, you’ll always be happy and healthy and rich? How many people assume that faith is nothing more than coming to church on Sunday, and ignoring it the rest of the week, as if God was a decoration you could take out on Sunday and store in a box the rest of the time? How many people who believe that are sitting in our pews right now?
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” We tend to think of the cross sentimentally, today. We sing hymns about it, we create beautiful artwork, we wear it as jewelry. If we think about “bearing our crosses,” we tend to think about things like arthritis, having to deal with annoying people, the kinds of problems everyone deals with all the time. That’s not what the disciples were thinking about when they heard Jesus say those words.
This is what they were thinking about: crucifixion was the ugliest, most painful, most shameful death the Roman Empire could come up with—and remember that this is a people who considered fights to the death to be a form of public entertainment. Criminals condemned to crucifixion were dragged naked through town, carrying a part of the thing that was going to kill them on their back, mocked by everyone who saw them. Then they were nailed to their cross—heavy, iron spikes driven through their hands and feet—and hung up in the air by those wounds for hours in the hot sun. They didn’t die from blood loss or pain, they died when their bodies became too weak and tired to hold their chest up to breathe anymore and they suffocated. And it took a long time, while the whole city watched and jeered. Take up your cross? What kind of insanity is that? Who would follow a Messiah who promised that as the reward?
Someone who had their mind set, not on human things, but on divine. Paul gives us a brief outline of what this mindset looks like in our second lesson: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. … Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Paul’s words give us a pretty picture of what life as a Christian is supposed to be like. It’s not as easy as he makes it sound of course, particularly in days like our own when hate and fear and evil seem to be everywhere, from local crime to national politics to international terrorists and wars. But oh, God, think of what life could be like if we could all genuinely live the way Paul tells us to, lives full of love and compassion and joy and harmony, a peace of mind and spirit too deep to be explained, even in times of trouble. Think of what life could be like, if we truly put our trust and our faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, the true Messiah who comes not for political or military revolution, but to save us from our sins, make us children of God, and show us how to live lives of truth and justice and grace. Think of what we could be if we put our faith in God, instead of our money and our power and our politics. If we were ruled by hope instead of fear. If we did what was right, instead of what was popular.
Living that way means that you can’t always take the easy way out. It means you can’t hide behind the excuse that everyone else is doing it. It also means that people aren’t always going to like what you have to say, or what you do. Few people in America risk death or imprisonment on account of their faith as Jeremiah did, but ridicule and discrimination, both obvious and not, are certainly possible. Focusing on divine things instead of human things doesn’t mean everything in your life will go well, or that God will reward your faith with material prosperity. But it does mean that no matter where you go, no matter what happens to you, God will be with you, to guide and protect and care for you.
Jeremiah died in exile in Egypt. We don’t know how he died; we do know that he never stopped calling the people of God to repentance and new lives of faith, and that once the worst had happened, his words turned to comfort and hope for the future. Peter was crucified in Rome, after years of working tirelessly to spread the Gospel. Yet they were never alone, for God was with them, and when they died, God was waiting to welcome them into the rooms prepared for them. May we, like them and all the saints that came before us, learn to keep our minds on God’s will, instead of our own. Amen.
