Sermon: What Does the Lord Require of You?

I’m preaching this sermon tomorrow based on Micah 6:1-8. In light of current events, and the divisions within our culture, God’s people need to hear again the call to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. I hope your Sunday is glorious!

What Does The Lord Require of You?
Micah 6:1-8 NRSV

1 Hear what the Lord says:
Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.
2 Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord,
and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the Lord has a controversy with his people,
and he will contend with Israel.

3 “O my people, what have I done to you?
In what have I wearied you? Answer me!
4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
and redeemed you from the house of slavery;
and I sent before you Moses,
Aaron, and Miriam.
5 O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised,
what Balaam son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”

6 “With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Called To Testify

We lived in Stone Mountain, Georgia when I was subpoenaed to testify in a murder trial. I did not know the defendant, but I knew his parents. They were calling every witness they could to try to prevent their son, who had killed his wife, from being sent to prison. I was called to testify that I would be available to counsel and guide the young man should the judge sentence him to probation. It seemed like a long shot to me, and in the end it was. The judge sentenced the husband to life in prison. His family wept, while on the other side of the courtroom, the slain woman’s family celebrated.

What we encounter today in this passage from Micah 6, is no less dramatic than my courtroom experience years ago.

In verses 1-2, the prophet Micah says to God’s people —

1 Hear what the Lord says:
Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.
2 Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord,
and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the Lord has a controversy with his people,
and he will contend with Israel.

So, God calls on the mountains, hills, and foundations of the earth to be witnesses to the great case against Israel. (And, probably Israel here means both Israel and Judah because the prophet Micah preached about the judgment on both kingdoms.)

In verse 3 God asks rhetorically —

“O my people, what have I done to you?  In what have I wearied you? Answer me!

Then, in verses 3-5, God recalls three major events in the life of His people when God saved them from certain disaster and destruction. The first was when God used Moses, Aaron, and Miriam to lead Israel from bondage in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. The second was when Balak, king of Moab, tried to hire Balaam, a prophet who listened to God, to curse Israel as they made their way to the Promised Land.

And, the third event was when Joshua led the nation of Israel from Shittim, crossing the Jordan, and finally stopping in Gilgal in the Land of Promise.

While we might lump all those stories together as part of the Exodus/Promised Land narrative, God breaks down the narrative into its component parts to remind Israel that every step along the way God had intervened and saved them.

But now it’s Israel’s turn to testify. And in verses 6-7, Israel asks indignantly —

6 “With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

Micah is probably representing what he has heard from his countrymen a hundred times over. They don’t get why God has an issue with them. And, of course, they jump right to how they do worship, because they think they’ve been doing worship quite well, thank you!

So, they begin reasonably — “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

These are, of course, the standard and typical offerings presented to God. Yearling calves, offered on the altar.

But then, they get snarky —  “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?” they ask sarcastically.

Rams and oil are offered to God in Temple worship, but not by the thousands and ten thousands. No, these are people who are put out that God dares to question how they do worship, because, of course, they’ve been doing worship at the Temple since Solomon was king — over 200 years at this point.

But then, they go too far. “Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

While the firstborn was dedicated to God, the firstborn (or any child or person) was expressly forbidden to be used as a sacrifice. Other nations around them offered child-sacrifices, often to Moloch, but Israel was prohibited from doing so. Some scholars think this sentence indicates they might have (and we know they did at one time), but others think this is the ultimate outrageous rebuttal to God’s criticism of them.

But now it’s Micah’s turn. In verse 8, Micah stops speaking the very words of God, and rather plainly observes —

8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

In other words, “You know what to do, and it has little to do with what happens inside the Temple and everything to do with how you live your lives.” My paraphrase.

So, let’s look at what God requires, then and now.

First, there are three verbs in the second part of verse 8: Do, love, and walk. All action verbs. All with objects or modifiers. All indicating real life actions, not ritual affectations.

So, let’s break them down.

Do Justice

I’m not using my favorite translation, the New International Version, because I think the NIV misses the translation here. In the NIV the text reads “live justly.” But, Micah says God requires that we “do justice.”

Of course, theologians have often been accused of “straining at gnats and swallowing camels” (I think Jesus said something like that), but here I believe the distinction is critical to understanding what God is saying.

There is a difference in “living justly” and being required to “do justice.” Here’s what I think the distinction is: “living justly” implies that while I go about my individual life, I’m to do things correctly. Now, that certainly is true, but “doing justice” shifts the emphasis from my individual everyday life to an intentional assignment to make sure justice gets done.

As in our day, life in Israel 700 or so years before Christ contained not only individual injustice, but systemic injustice. Their injustice was like ours — the powerful abused those least able to stand up for themselves.

In Chapter 3, Micah notes:

“Listen, you rulers of Jacob, you chiefs of the House of Israel! For you ought to know what is right, but you hate good and love evil. You have devoured My people’s flesh; you have flayed the skin off them, and the flesh off their bones.”

In 3:9, Micah continues:

“Hear this, you rulers of the House of Jacob, you chiefs of the House of Israel, who detest justice and make crooked all that is straight, who build Zion with crime, Jerusalem with iniquity! Her rulers judge for gifts, her priests give rulings for a fee, and her prophets divine for pay…”

The poor were exploited, those with cases to be heard had to bribe the judge to get a favorable ruling, and even in the Temple priests and prophets demanded more than their normal support to do their jobs.

Micah rails against this type of injustice which is built into the Temple, the courts, and society in general. Remember, the prophets generally brought three charges against God’s people regardless of when they prophesied: 1) they worshiped idols; 2) they worshiped insincerely; and, 3) they did not care for the poor, the widows, the orphans, and the stranger. Here Micah speaks of all three transgressions and failures.

To do justice means to ensure that everyone — rich, poor, powerful, or humble — has an equal place at God’s table. Old Testament law provided numerous ways for the poor to be fed, the widows to be cared for, the orphans to be nurtured, and the stranger to be welcomed. But, over and over, Israel’s spiritual and civic leaders bend the rules for their own benefit, while at the same time pretending to be righteous and upright. Jesus will condemn this same hypocrisy in the first century, 700 years later.

God’s requirement to “do justice” is not directed at our modern political parties, civic leaders, or social trendsetters. This is a requirement of God’s people. This is our duty, our job, our responsibility.

In LaGrange, Georgia last week, the chief of police, Louis Dekmar, apologized to the African American citizens of LaGrange on behalf of the city and the police department. He apologized that his department did nothing to protect a black teenager named Austin Callaway in 1940. Callaway had been charged with offending a white woman, and had been placed in the LaGrange city jail. That night, 6 white men with one gun, held the jailer at gunpoint, forcing him to open the jail and release Callaway to them. Later Callaway was found shot several times. He was transported to the hospital where he died of gunshot wounds. Chief Dekmar found there were no case notes, no investigation, and no one was ever arrested for the murder of Austin Callaway. That is an example of systemic injustice. But the courageous apology of a white police chief brought some justice to that community 77 years later.

But if we are not in positions of authority to see that justice is done in our social settings and systems, still we are required to be working to bring about changes in our society so that justice is done, and so that all share God’s blessings, all feed at God’s table, and so that all — not just some — flourish in God’s creation.

Of course, justice also means that good is valued and evil is judged. That’s a part of justice, too. That aspect of justice keeps our society ordered, and our social corrections proportional.

Justice then, is both systemic and personal.

Which brings us to the second requirement —

Love Kindness (Mercy)

No translation is perfect, and here the New Revised Standard Version lets me down. The Hebrew word translated “kindness” here is the word “hesed” which means “lovingkindness.” But, I guess it sounded awkward to say, “Love lovingkindness.” But lovingkindness also means mercy, so the good old King James Version gets it right when it translates this phrase to “Love mercy.”

And, loving mercy goes hand in hand with doing justice, obviously. If you just do justice — especially that which judges and sorts out good from evil — with no allowance for mercy, kindness, and forgiveness — then you have missed the example of God’s own lovingkindness and mercy.

That’s the point here — we do what God does. We “do justice,” but we “love mercy.” That sounds to me like mercy might be as important, if not more so, than doing justice. Justice always has to be tempered with mercy or we become a society with no heart, no compassion, no empathy.

Dr. Richard Hayes of Duke University writes of mercy — “Mercy precedes everything: that, and only that, is why the announcement of the kingdom of heaven is good news.” — (The Moral Vision of the New Testament, pg. 103.)

The story is told of two ancient rabbis who were walking together one day. One bemoaned the fact that they no longer had the Temple in which to worship God. “But,” the other reassured his colleague, “we still have hesed.” His point was, that even if there was no Temple in which to worship, they could still perform acts of mercy and lovingkindness.

Do justice. Love mercy. Do we love mercy, or do we extend mercy as a last, begrudging resort, just because sometimes we have to?

Walk Humbly with Your God

Then Micah adds the final requirement — to walk humbly with your God. “Walk” of course is an analogy for the way in which we live our lives. We speak of people who are hypocritical because they “talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk.”

The idea of walking with God has its origins in the Garden of Eden where God walked with Adam and Eve each evening. Our walk with God is not only our conduct before him, but our fellowship with Him.

There are, I suppose, any number of ways we could walk with God. Certainly we could walk regularly with God. Adam and Eve did so until they sinned, and then they hid from God.

We could walk gratefully with God. Scripture in both Old and New Testaments is filled with exhortations to give thanks, and prayers and songs that give voice to thankfulness.

We could also walk confidently with God. John writes in 1 John 1:5-6 — “This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did.” So our walk with God gives us confidence in our relationship to God.

But while we might walk regularly, or gratefully, or confidently, Micah reminds us that what is required of us is that we walk humbly with our God.

According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, the virtue of humility may be defined as: “A quality by which a person considering his own defects has a lowly opinion of himself and willingly submits himself to God and to others for God’s sake.” St. Bernard defines it: “A virtue by which a man knowing himself as he truly is, abases himself.” These definitions coincide with that given by St. Thomas: “The virtue of humility”, he says, “Consists in keeping oneself within one’s own bounds, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to one’s superior”   — (Devine, A. (1910). Humility. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved January 28, 2017 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07543b.htm)

And there it is: humility is knowing our limitations, especially in light of God’s limitless love, grace, and mercy.

To walk humbly with God is to fellowship with God knowing that our relationship is not between peers, but of Creator to created, and of Redeemer to redeemed.

Walking humbly with God also reminds us that God has acted justly and shown mercy on our behalf.

One ancient rabbi said that Micah had taken the 613 laws of Moses and reduced them to their essence when he observed —

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God?

When you watch the news this week, ask yourself, “Are we as a nation doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God?” And if the answer is “no” or even “maybe not” then we must remind ourselves that God has shown us what is good. And that good means that we must do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. That is what the Lord requires of us.

Podcast: After 9/11, Forgiveness Cancels A Debt

This is the podcast of the sermon I preached on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.  I titled this sermon After 9/11 Forgiveness Cancels A Debt.  Appropriately the revised common lectionary Gospel reading for that day came from Matthew 18:21-35 which presents Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness.  I hope you find this helpful as you reflect on the ongoing tragedies that occurred on and after that sad day in the life of our nation and the world.

Sermon: After 9/11, Forgiveness Cancels A Debt

Forgiveness Cancels a Debt

Matthew 18:21-35 NIV’84

²¹ Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”

²² Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

²³ “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. ²⁴ As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talentswas brought to him. ²⁵ Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

²⁶ “The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ ²⁷ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

²⁸ “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

²⁹ “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’

³⁰ “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. ³¹ When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.

³² “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. ³³ Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ ³⁴ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

³⁵ “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

The 10^th Anniversary of 9/11

We are gathered here today as we usually are at this time on a Sunday morning.  But by this time of the morning  10 years ago, we knew that American was under attack.

For those of my father’s generation, the question had always been, “Where you were when you heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked?”  Of course, Pearl Harbor became the moment that our nation realized that it could not remain a spectator in the conflagration that had begun with Adolph Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, and the rise of the Axis Powers in Italy and Japan.  Pearl Harbor changed America.  Tom Brokaw correctly titled his book about those who faced up to the challenges of that time, The Greatest Generation.

For my generation of baby boomers, the question was asked 22 years later, “Where you were when President Kennedy was assassinated?”  I do.  I was in eighth grade social studies class.  Mr. Shannon, our social studies teacher, had left the room.  In a moment he returned and told the class that the President had been shot.  Televisions were turned on in classrooms that had them, and for the rest of the day we watched live television as Walter Cronkite tried to piece together the fragmented reports coming from eyewitnesses, reporters on the scene, and law enforcement officials.

The Sunday following the President’s death, my family, along with the families of other church members, were gathered at Dalewood Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee.  As the service came to a close that day, someone handed our pastor a note.  He stood and informed the congregation that Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy, had himself been shot while being transferred at the police station in Dallas, Texas.  For my generation, President Kennedy’s death marked the first of many assassinations, and attempted assassinations of public figures.  In April, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee.  In June of that same year, Robert Kennedy was shot and killed after celebrating his victory in the Democratic primary in California.

President Kennedy’s death marked the beginning of the end for my generation of an innocence that had seemed to pervade the 1950s, and the post-World War II prosperity of the United States.  The war in Viet Nam, the Civil Rights struggle, and the emergence of an alternative culture of “flower children” opened a new chapter in American civic life.  President Kennedy’s assassination changed our country, but in different ways than Pearl Harbor had.

And then came September 11, 2001.  Debbie and I were at our daughter Laurie’s home in Greenville, South Carolina.  We were there because that September 11, 2001 was the first birthday of our granddaughter, Vivian.  We had arrived the night before and had just finished breakfast when the phone rang.  Laurie answered it, and our son-in-law, Steve, told her to turn on the TV.  New York was under attack, he said.

We turned on the television, and watched in stunned silence as the twin towers of the World Trade Center burned.  And then the unthinkable happened.  The towers came down, one at a time, in an unbelievable cascade of steel, concrete, dust, and paper.  I think I remember the papers the most.  Hundreds of thousands of 8 ½ by 11 sheets of paper.  Papers that had been on desks, in copiers, in printers waiting to be sorted and filed, papers that floated to the ground representing for me those lost in the tragedy that day.

After the towers fell, Laurie, Debbie and I still had some birthday party shopping to do for Vivian’s party that night. We arrived at the mall near their home, and were only there a few minutes when we noticed that stores were lowering their security gates and closing.  We left mall and returned home.  By mid-afternoon we turned off the TV.  Despite the tragedy, and perhaps because of it, we decided to focus on Vivian’s first birthday.

Her party was that night, and her other grandparents were there, too.  Somewhere in the chaos and sorrow of that day, our daughter managed to write Vivian a letter.  She explained to her that something very sad had happened on her birthday, which had nothing to do with her.   But that from that day, and for all of her birthdays to come, the date of September 11 – 9/11 – would be remembered as a very sad day in the life of our country.  But, she told Vivian, there was still a future, a future that held promise and hope and love and possibility.  Laurie told Vivian that even though the events of 9/11 might have overshadowed her first birthday, that she was loved by her parents, her grandparents, and her family.  Vivian, Laurie said, could face the future knowing that there were those who loved her, and that her life could be a life of hope and promise.

That’s where we were on 9/11.  I’m sure you remember where you were, too.

Today’s Lectionary Gospel Reading

All of that brings me to the Gospel reading for today, Matthew 18:21-35.  One of the things I like about preaching from the revised common lectionary is that the passages that have been selected often seem divinely appointed for that particular Sunday.

But, of course, God uses even our unintended choices to communicate with us.

Today we read the words of Jesus about forgiveness.  Peter – isn’t it always Peter who asks about these things? – asks Jesus how often he should forgive someone.  But not just any someone, Peter asks how often he should forgive a “brother.”  Thinking that he knew the answer, and I’m sure also thinking that he would impress Jesus with his knowledge, Peter answers his own question by saying, “Seven times?”

By offering an answer to this age-old question of how often should we forgive someone, Peter exceeded the common wisdom of the rabbis of his day.  They thought no one should ask forgiveness of another more than three times.  I suppose their thinking went something like this:  If someone needs to ask forgiveness for a mistake that caused another harm in some way, that is understandable.  After all, we are all human and anyone can make a mistake.

The second time someone asks for forgiveness, perhaps he or she is struggling to get under control some character defect, or habitual behavior.  One can certainly understand how that could happen.

But the third time someone has to ask for forgiveness of the person they have twice wronged, they better get it right this time.  Although this was long before baseball was invented by Abner Doubleday, the rabbis had a kind of “three strikes and you’re out” approach.

But Peter ups the ante.  He latches onto the number 7, and who knows why.  Some have indicated that this was also rabbinical teaching, but I think Peter was going for an answer to impress Jesus.  By doubling the rabbis common answer, and throwing in one more for good measure.  Perhaps Peter had the days of creation in mind.  Or perhaps Peter knew that the number 7 represented perfection and could not be improved upon.

Whatever Peter’s thinking, he poses a question, provides the answer, and then waits smugly for the amazed Jesus to commend him in front of all the other disciples.

Only, that’s not what happens at all.  Jesus tells Peter, “not seven times, but seventy seven times.”  Some translations have “seventy times,” or “seventy times seven.”  Either way the numbers are not the point.  The point is that forgiveness is to be infinite, inexhaustible, and always available among Jesus’ followers.

To further illustrate exactly what he means, Jesus tells a story, a parable, about what life is like in the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God.

And the story is meant to drive home the point of the infinite scope of forgiveness as it should be practiced by those who would come after Jesus.

A ruler is settling accounts, Jesus says, and calls in a servant who owes him 10,000 talents.  Okay, let’s stop right here, because this is the point of the story.  “10,000 talents” is a meaningless phrase to us in 21^st century America.  We are used to much bigger numbers than 10,000, especially when it comes to our government.  As the late Senator Everett Dirksen is quoted as saying, “A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”  (Incidentally, there is disagreement about whether Dirksen actually said that, but it’s still a good quote.)

To help us understand what Jesus was saying, one talent, probably a silver talent, was the equivalent of 20-years’ wages for the servant in question.  Okay, you do the math.  Multiply 20-years by 10,000, and you get 200,000 years of wages!  Which makes one want to ask the question, “Why did the ruler loan this guy so much money, and what in the world could he have done with it?”  But that’s not the point of the story.

The point of the story is that the servant owed a debt he could not pay.  He could not ever have paid it, not in his lifetime, the lifetimes of his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  Which actually sounds like our national debt, but that’s not the point either.

No, the point was that this servant owed a debt he could not pay.  Ever.  The ruler, realizing this, ordered that the man, his wife, and his family be thrown in prison until he could pay.  (Which seems counter-productive to me, unless the earning potential of first century prisoners was much greater than it is today.)

But, the servant fell to his knees and pleaded with his master.  “I’ll pay every cent,” he promised.  And, did the master believe him?  Of course not.  Matthew says the master canceled the debt.  He knew the servant could never pay it, and I’m sure he knew that the servant would never pay it from jail either.  So, he canceled it.  Wrote “Paid in Full” on it in big letters, and gave the canceled note to the servant.  Or something like that.

Ecstatic the servant rushes from the master’s presence, out into the street, and whom should he run into almost immediately?  Why another servant, of course.  Only this servant owed our friend some money – about a hundred denarii.  Again, this is meaningless to us, until we understand that a denarius was about one days’ wage.  Of course, that makes 100 denarii about 100 days’ wages.  That is not a small sum by any means in the first century, but it is a debt that could conceivably be paid by a fellow servant.

But rather than share his good fortune with his fellow servant, our friend the now-debt-free servant has his debtor thrown in jail until he can pay.  Very unfair, it seems, and those looking on thought so, too.

These other servants of the master run and tell their master what has just happened.  “Sir, do you remember Jacob, your servant, whose debt you just canceled?”  (I made up the name Jacob, but seems fitting because the original was a schemer, too.)  “Of course,” the master said.  “Well, he just sent poor old Simeon to prison because he couldn’t pay him 100 days’ wages.”

With that news the master was livid.  He sent runners to find and bring back this ungrateful and unmerciful servant, whatever his name was.  “Didn’t I just forgive you?” I am sure he asked.  “And, now you have refused to forgive someone who owes you such a little sum?”

With that that master had the unmerciful servant thrown into jail, not just to be held, but to be “tortured” by the jailers until he could pay.  That’s the last we hear of the unmerciful servant.

Jesus does add one interesting footnote to this story.  “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

I think the point here is not that God will hand us over to be tortured, but that God takes a very dim view of those who are shown mercy and forgiveness, but who do not show mercy and forgiveness to others in return.

Forgiveness Cancels A Debt

What does this mean for us today?  The story is a story that Jesus himself says represents life in the kingdom of heaven.  We have to ask ourselves in what way this story tells us about the kingdom of God and how life is to be lived in that kingdom.

First, we are the servant who is deeply in debt.  That should be obvious.  We owe a debt to God we cannot pay in many ways.  It was the same in the first century as it is in the 21^st century.  Israel as a nation had returned God’s love with rigid legalism.  The rulers of Israel have betrayed their purpose and their calling as the people of God by aligning themselves with the Roman Empire.  They have sold out their own people by guaranteeing that taxes will be collected, and that the region will remain under Roman rule without incident.

Our debt, and theirs, to God was immense, unfathomable, and uncollectable.  There is no way they, or we, could ever set the account right.  As one preacher put it, “Jesus paid a debt he did not owe, because we owed a debt we could not pay.”

Secondly, God is the master.  That should be obvious.  The master is infinitely rich, so much so that 10,000 talents, or 200,000 years’ wages, is insignificant to the master.  The master is so rich that even this mind-boggling amount of money is not going to bankrupt him, or even make a sizeable dent in his financial situation.  God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills (which is a poetic way of saying “all of them”) is not threatened by our debt.

Thirdly, mercy and forgiveness is God’s response to our hopelessness.  While we might plead with God that we’ll do better, we’ll make him proud, we’ll pay him back, the fact is that we will for the most part continue to do exactly what we have always done.  That is, we will fail to be all that God has called us to be and created us for.  But rather than wipe us off the earth, God wipes our debt to him off his ledgers.  God’s mercy extends to us in our helplessness and hopelessness.  God forgives our debt, wipes the slate clean, and gives us a new start.

That’s the good news.  Jesus paid our debt.  Jesus died in our place.  Jesus did for us what we could not have ever done for ourselves.  And he did it willingly, lovingly, and intentionally.

Finally, now that we have been forgiven, and our debts have been canceled, we are expected to do the same for others.  We are expected to show undeserved mercy and grace to those who do not have the capacity or the will to repay our act of kindness and love.  That is what life in the kingdom of heaven is like.  That is one way in which we can “love God and love others” according to Jesus.

What Does That Have To Do With 9/11?

What does this have to do with 9/11?  There are a lot of things that you and I cannot control.  We are not the ones who decide if and when our nation will go to war.  We are not the ones who are privy to classified intelligence information.  You and I are not in a position to take on the safety and security of the nation as our responsibility.  We elect our leaders, and entrust to them the power and authority to make those decisions.  And we honor those who keep us safe and secure, even in this age of uncertainty and insecurity.

But there is something you and I as followers of Jesus can do.  We can extend grace and mercy to those who need it, because we ourselves are the recipients of God’s grace and mercy.

Jesus gave us examples of what that might look like. He told the story of the Good Samaritan at a time when all Jews thought the words “good” and “Samaritan” did not belong in the same sentence.

Jesus forgave a woman caught in the immoral act of adultery when the religious leaders who accused her were will within their rights to demand that she be stoned for violating the accepted Biblical standards of morality.  He simply said to her, “Go and sin no more.”

Jesus told Peter to put up his sword, and he healed the high priest’s servant whose ear Peter had lopped off.  And, later Jesus forgave Peter for betraying him and abandoning him to be flogged and crucified.

And, while he hung on the cross, Jesus last prayer was for those who were torturing and killing him.  He prayed, “Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.”

In our own small ways we can extend to others the same mercy and grace that God has extended to us.  Rather than reacting in fear and anger to the growing number of Muslims in America, or the world for that matter, we might start to think of them as persons whom God loves.

Rather than rail against the working immigrants in our country, we might remember that most of us are from immigrant families, unless we are Native Americans, and that those who preceded us and made life in America possible for us endured the prejudice and unkindness of those who also called themselves Christians. I remember by grandmother telling me that her family name of Callaham, had been changed from O’Callaham because the Irish were discriminated against when her family first came to America.

We live a world that is flawed and dangerous, but we serve a God whose love, mercy, and forgiveness we have experienced.  And, we have the words of Jesus to remind us that God expects, as part of life in God’s kingdom, that we as God’s ambassadors will live our lives differently.  That we will extend to others the same forgiveness that we have experienced, that we will nurture the same mercy toward others that we have been shown, and that we will live our lives as grateful and merciful servants, rather than like the unmerciful servant of Jesus’ story.

Will that make a difference in our community and our world?  Will it prevent another 9/11, or another Pearl Harbor, or another presidential assassination.  Perhaps it will, but even if other horrific things happen, the presence of evil does not invalidate the purpose of God.  If anything, the presence of evil reminds us that love wins, that God is present with us, and that we are the ones who will demonstrate to the world that there is a way to live life as God has intended it, and that that life is possible through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The first words that came to Colleen Kelly’s mind when she realized that her brother was gone were, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Colleen’s brother Bill worked for Bloomberg as a financial services salesman.  He didn’t work at the World Trade Center.  But on that day, September 11, 2001, Bill was attending a conference held at Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 107^th floor of the World Trade Center.

After the Towers fell, and when she could not contact Bill, Colleen rushed from one New York City hospital to another in a desperate search for her brother.  At each hospital she saw scores of doctors and nurses, but realized that few were actually being admitted because there were no survivors.

According to Ellis Cose, who tells Colleen’s story in his book, Bone To Pick: Of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Revenge, Colleen knew that the prayer of Jesus made no sense.  The terrorists knew exactly what they were doing, she would later learn.

But those words – “Father, forgive them…” – seemed to help her hold onto her faith and the values she cherished.  The terrorists took her brother, but Colleen was determined that they would not take anything else.

So, Colleen and others founded September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.  Colleen was determined to do all she could to stop the cycle of international violence and death.

That meant that when the United States was preparing to attack Iraq several months later, Colleen and other September Eleventh Families made the trip to Iraq to assure the Iraqi people they met with that there were Americans who did not hate them, or wish them dead.  They also met with the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20^th hijacker, in an attempt at dialogue and reconciliation.

Did Colleen’s acts stop a war or prevent other suicide missions?  Probably not, but the point is not that we are successful as followers of Jesus.  We will not be judged by our success, only by our faithfulness. Only by the ways in which we have forgiven others because we ourselves have been forgiven.

Sermon: The Only Prayer We Can Pray

Jesus reminds us that there is one prayer we can and must pray.  It is a prayer that reflects our understanding of who we are in our relationship to God and others.

The Only Prayer We Can Pray

Luke 18:9-14

9To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

13“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

14“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

One of the things I like about scripture, particularly passages like this, is they tell us exactly what to look for.  By this time in his ministry, Jesus has become somewhat famous for telling parables.  The word parable comes from the Greek word parabole’ which means to “throw alongside.”  Parables were stories tossed to the hearers to make a point.

But sometimes the parables were enigmatic and mysterious.  In Mark’s Gospel Jesus has to explain some of his parables to the disciples, who seem as mystified as the crowds about the point Jesus is trying to make.

But here, in this parable, Luke tells us several things. First, Luke tells us about whom Jesus was speaking —

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable…

Now that’s pretty clear.  There is no doubt to whom Jesus is speaking and what problem he’s addressing.  So, this parable is going to be one of the easy ones, one of those that is blatantly apparent when it gets told.

And, it is.  Jesus then tells the story of two men who went up to the Temple to pray.  So, this is not just an ordinary day, or an ordinary time of prayer.  Going up to the Temple to pray usually involved some special occasion, a feast day, or some event in the life of the worshipper that brought them to the Temple.  Going to the Temple wasn’t like our going to church on Sundays.  A Temple visit was a special occasion which required ritual preparation, the exchange of Roman coinage for Temple currency, and the purchase of a sacrifice if one was going to be offered.

The righteous Jewish man would make his way up through the winding streets of Jerusalem, assiduously avoiding anything that might make him ceremonially unfit for Temple worship.  As he ascended the Temple entrance, he entered the Court of the Gentiles.

This large portico, the outer court of the Temple, most of which was out in the open except for the colonnades, was the place for God-fearers to gather to pay homage to the one true God, the God of Israel.  This was the court from which Jesus ran the money-changers.  His words were, “My father’s house is a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.”  What sometimes gets lost in the account of the cleansing of the Temple was that when Jesus said, “My father’s house is a house of prayer” everyone who heard him would have filled in the rest of the scripture, which read, “…a house of prayer for all nations.”

In other words, the moneychangers and the merchants were taking up space allotted for non-Jews.  The Gentiles couldn’t go any further into the Temple upon penalty of death, so disregarding the purpose of the Court of the Gentiles in order to exchange money and sell sacrificial animals deprived the non-Jews of their place in God’s house.

Okay, enough of that, but I wanted you to get the picture.  But back to our two Jewish friends, two men going up to pray.  So, they pass through the Court of the Gentiles, and then bypass the Court of the Women.  Remember that this is a paternalistic society, and Jewish women could come past the Court of the Gentiles, but no further than the next courtyard, the Court of the Women.  The Court of the Women was an enclosed area, unlike the Court of the Gentiles which was an enormous open space.

I’m not sure why our church has two front doors, but many old churches have two front doors because the women entered in one door, and the men entered the other, and they sat separately during worship.  The Old German Baptist Brethren still practice this to some extent.  Men sit on one side of the church, women on the other, but they do have families seated together in the middle.

Once they are past the Court of the Women, our two friends enter the Court of Israel.  This is where Jewish men can gather, offer prayers, give their sacrifice to the priest, and worship God.

So, it is in this part of the Temple, most likely, that this parable takes place.  Perhaps it is a high holy day, or a day of festival.  Or perhaps one of our worshippers has experienced the blessing of God in an extraordinary way.  We don’t know what brings our two friends to the Temple, but we do know who they are.

One is a Pharisee, the other a tax collector.  Which is very much like Jesus saying, “Have you heard the one about the Pharisee and the tax collector?”  By putting these two types of men in the same sentence, Jesus has already crossed the line of propriety.  You literally didn’t mention “Pharisee” and “tax collector” in the same breath.

So, immediately Jesus has the attention of everyone standing around, some of whom are — you guessed it — Pharisees.  Oh, and there’s at least one tax collector, or former tax collector named Matthew in the crowd, too.  Not sure where Zacchaeus is on this particular day, but Jesus already had the reputation of eating with “tax collectors and sinners.”  The phrase itself was redundant in first century Jewish society.

Let me tell you about the tax collector first.  Tax collectors were a hated bunch of guys in Jesus’ day.  They were hated because, first, they collected taxes and for thousands of years people of every cultural stripe have hated paying taxes.  And, Roman taxes were high, and systematically collected.  You remember that Mary and Joseph had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem before the birth of Jesus to be counted, and the counting was so that the Roman government could know from whom to collect its taxes.  Unlike my grandfather who told my grandmother that the IRS didn’t know he existed.  He found out differently.

But, if that weren’t enough, tax collectors could also collect whatever amount they wanted to.  You might have owed the Roman governor 15 denarii, or fifteen days wages, but the tax collector could tell you that your bill was 20 denarii, or 25, or 50, depending on how much money he wanted to make, and his ability to enforce his demands.

Not only was the Roman system of taxation spread widely, but it also dug deeply into the coin purses of every household.  And paying through tax collectors was the only way to get your taxes paid, and your name duly checked off.  So, you paid extra because that was the way the system worked.

But you didn’t have to like it.  And you didn’t have to be kind to the tax man, or speak nicely to him, or befriend him, or even act in a civil manner.  You could show your complete disdain for him and his dirty business.  Tax collectors, needless to say, were never invited to the best parties, or asked to lead civic events, or held up as model citizens.  They were Jews stealing from their fellows Jews, and so in this way, they were worse than the Romans.

But, let’s turn to the Pharisee.  Everything the tax collector was, the Pharisee was his exact opposite.  Pharisees have a bad reputation today because we know they were always on the wrong side of whatever it was that Jesus was doing, until finally they orchestrated Jesus’ arrest, trial and execution.

But, if we lived in Jesus’ day, we’d like the Pharisees.  The Pharisees were the keepers of the Law, the defenders of the Torah.  In our 21st century language, Pharisees loved Scripture, studied it endlessly, memorized it faithfully, and practiced it publicly.

Pharisees were conservative in their views of religious life.  They weren’t for changing things.  They had made an uneasy peace with the Roman government, and as long as the Romans let them worship and practice their faith, the Pharisees were fine with Rome.

The Pharisees were also good men. I say “men” because a woman might be married to a Pharisee, but women were not called Pharisees as such.  But Pharisees were good men.  They gave generously and sometimes flambuoyantly of their income.  In the Temple were great receptacles for monetary offerings shaped like the open end of a trumpet.  A Pharisee could make a great show of rolling coins around the horn of the offering trumpets, making sure all around both heard and saw his generosity.

Pharisees observed the dietary laws, the sabbath laws, the laws of ceremonial cleanliness, and on and on.  They were the good, solid citizens of Jewish society, and they even believed in the resurrection of the righteous, which their counterparts the Sadducees, did not.

If our church were situated in the first century, instead of being called Chatham Baptist Church, I am sure we would be called Chatham Church of the Pharisees, and we would be proud of it!  To call someone a Pharisee in Jesus’ day was to pay them respect and honor them for their faithfulness to God.  Or so everyone thought.

And this is where Jesus really gets under their skin.  He says, “A Pharisee and a tax collector go up to the Temple to pray.”

But then he goes on, “And the Pharisee prays about himself.”  Actually, this could also be translated, “The Pharisee prays to himself.”  That’s right, either way, Jesus is letting his hearers know that the Pharisee is either praying about himself and not God, or to himself and not God.

And here’s what he says:  “There but for the grace of God, go I.”  Actually, that’s not exactly what he says, but it means the same thing.  “I thank you, God, that I am not like other men — murderers, thieves, adulterers, even this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”

We’re glad today, 2,000 years later, that we are not like murderers, thieves, and adulterers, or even dishonest tax collectors.  I mean, none of us wants to labeled among the vilest of society, like people who break the Ten Commandments two at a time.

If we were in this story that Jesus tells, we’d all be Pharisees.  And I think that was kind of the point.  But I’ll get to that in a minute.

But now look at the tax collector.  Jesus says, “He doesn’t even lift his head.”  That doesn’t seem strange to us, because we bow our heads when we pray, but the practice of prayer in the Temple was to look up, hold out your arms, bellow your prayers so that others could hear.  (Which is why Jesus said in Matthew’s Gospel, “Don’t pray like the Pharisees, standing on the street corner, saying a lot of pious sounding words.”)

All the tax collector says is, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Okay, you get to pick.  Which one of these guys gets a gold star today?  Is it the upstanding, well-mannered, scripture-quoting, tithing, fasting, praying Pharisee?  Or is it snivelling, dishonest, disgraced, traitorous tax collector?  I’ll give you minute to think it over.

Okay, time is up.  Of course, you know this story so you know that Jesus says of the tax collector, “I tell you this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.”

Bang!  the Pharisees get hit right between the eyes.  “How could this happen?” I am sure they asked.  “How could a tax collector be justified before God over a devout Pharisee?”

Now, remember, Jesus doesn’t say, “A former tax collector.”  Or, “an ex-tax collector.”  Or even, “a repentant tax collector.”  No, this is a real, honest-to-goodness, tax collector who is still collecting taxes, still cheating people because that’s how he makes his money.  But, and here’s the important point, something is stirring in our tax collector’s heart.

This tax collector knows he’s a sinner.  He knows his life is not pleasing to God, and is not helping his community.  This tax collector has taken the first step toward God.  He hasn’t repented yet, but he has recognized his sin.  He now knows that he is a thief, a liar, a cheat, a betrayer of his own people.  He sees himself for what he is.  He sees himself as others see him.  He sees himself as God sees him.  And he is cut to the heart, stricken by what he sees.  Heartbroken by his own sin.

And so his only prayer is a prayer for mercy.  What else can he say?  “Lord, this is the only job I could find.”  Or, “Lord, somebody has to do it, and there are worse people than me.”?  No, he says, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Sin as a word and an idea has really fallen out of favor in our society.  About the only place we talk about sin is in church, so we get the impression that sin isn’t a real problem in society anymore.  Several years ago, the psychiatrist, Karl Menninger wrote a popular book titled, “Whatever Became of Sin?”  Well, sin isn’t fashionable anymore.  But it’s still around.  And the tax collector knew he had committed sins, and that made him a sinner.

But back to our friend the Pharisee.  What’s wrong with the Pharisee?  Luke sums it up for us:  they were confident in their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else.

Why is that such a problem.  The Pharisee was a better man than the tax collector by all outward appearances.  He tithed, the tax collector did not.  He fasted, the tax collector probably feasted.  He kept all the holy days at the Temple, but this was probably the first time the tax collector had been in the Temple in a long time.  The Pharisee was by anybody’s account the better man.

Except the Pharisee didn’t think he was a sinner.  He knew the tax collector was, he knew the murderer was, he knew the thief was, and he knew the adulterer was because those people broke commandments, and violated the Law of God.  But not him.  He was righteous.  Upstanding.  A good citizen.  A model religious leader.

But he was also arrogant.  Self-righteous.  Self-centered.  Self-satisfied.  He needed nothing.  Except, of course, for others to know that he was not like the tax collector.

Because the Pharisee’s arrogance doesn’t end there.  Arrogance leads to separating yourself from others.  Arrogance leads to believing that you’re right and everyone else is wrong.  Arrogance leads to thinking that everyone should be like you.  That if everyone in the world were like you, wouldn’t the world be a better place?

Arrogance also damages the community.  Here were two Jews — not a Jew and a Samaritan, not a Jew and a Gentile — but two Jews.  Brothers by ancestry, adherents to the worship of the one true God, the God of Israel. Two men who were both outstanding in their own ways, one famous perhaps, the other infamous no doubt.  But arrogance has separated them.

And not only has arrogance separated them, it has cut off the tax collector and his family and his children from the warm traditions of their faith, and cast them out of the closed society of Judaism to which they rightfully belonged.  Some wonder how the tax collector even got into the Temple, much less was given time to pray.

Normally, we talk about how we shouldn’t look down on others, or think more of ourselves than we ought to think, or we draw other similar lessons from this parable.  Jesus helps us by saying the exalted shall be humbled, and the humble shall be exalted.  So that’s the lesson.  But this story has more than just personal application.

When we put ourselves above others, think of ourselves as different from our fellow human beings, bad and terrible things result.  In our own country, clergymen preached from prestigious pulpits of both the North and South that the Bible affirmed the inferiority of the negro slave, and therefore, the white man had the right, and the duty, to tame the savage and command from him good, honest work.  The fact that slavery served both the economic interests of North and South, of course, was never mentioned.

In Hitler’s rise to power, the Jews were seen as the problem.  They were different, an inferior race, a mischievous group who not only reject Jesus Christ, but who killed him.  They and their nefarious schemes were to blame for the economic woes of pre-war Germany, according to Nazi propaganda.  So, Hitler’s appeal to Germans as the superior race, better than others like Jews, or Gypsies, or homosexuals, led directly to the “final solution” — the extermination of those inferior peoples.  Six million Jews were killed, not to mention hundreds of thousands of Romany (Gypsies), and others who did not fit the Third Reich’s portrait of a superior people.

Religion often contributes to this “I’m glad I’m not like him” syndrome, but not always.  I was gratified to read that an evangelical group, known for its opposition to gays, had suspended a nationwide anti-gay high school program after the suicides of several young gay students, students who took their own lives because they were bullied for being gay.  Cancelling that program was a good thing to do, and showed that some realize that when we position ourselves as superior to others — morally, spiritually, ethically, genetically, or in any other way — the consequences can be deadly.

I have titled this sermon, The Only Prayer We Can Pray.  Perhaps that’s a bit of an overstatement.  But the prayer of the tax collector is certainly the first prayer we must pray.  It is the only prayer we can pray in relationship to others.  And when we recognize that we are sinners, despite our appearance of respectability, and that our only real option is to beg for God’s mercy, then we begin to live our lives truthfully before God and each other.

The tax collector’s prayer is the only prayer we can pray if we are honest with ourselves.  It is the only prayer we can pray if we see ourselves as God sees us.  It is the only prayer we can pray if we are interested in reconciling humanity to God, and bringing the shalom of God to earth.  “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  Amen.

 

Sermon: The Wisdom of Justice and Mercy

This summer I’m preaching a series of sermons titled “The Wisdom of …..” and today’s sermon was “The Wisdom of Justice and Mercy.”  Each of the 8 sermons is based on a text from the revised common lectionary for that day.  Here’s today’s sermon:

The Wisdom of Justice and Mercy

Genesis 18:20-32

20 Then the LORD said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous 21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”

22 The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the LORD.  23 Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge [c] of all the earth do right?”

26 The LORD said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

27 Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, 28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?”

“If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”

29 Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?”

He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.”

30 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?”

He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”

31 Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?”

He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.”

32 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”

He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”

The Story Before Our Story

This story of Abraham comes right after the visit of three men, often thought to be angels.  However, the dialogue in the chapter switches back and forth from the visitors speaking to God speaking, which leads theologians to describe the visit of these men to Abraham and Sarah as a theophany — an appearance of God in another form.

Whether they were angels, or the presence of God, the message is that when they return in a year, Sarah will have a son.  Abraham will have a son, too, which is what they both had been hoping against hope for.  But both Abraham and Sarah are well up in years (approximately 100  and 90 respectively), and so this news comes as both a surprise, and an uncertainty.  So uncertain is Sarah that she laughs at the prospect, and God catches her in her doubting laughter.

Abraham Bargains With God

But that’s not the point of our story today.  As the visitors are departing, the narrator switches to the voice of God who says, “I’m going down to check on Sodom and Gomorrah, because I’ve been hearing bad things about them.”  God continues, “I’m going to see if they are really that bad, and if they are, I’m going to destroy both cities.”

This gives Abraham some concern.  Primarily, I imagine, because his nephew Lot and his family live in Sodom.  So, Abraham begins this rather indirect dialogue with God.

“Okay, but if there are 50 righteous people there, you won’t destroy it, will you?  After all, you wouldn’t destroy the good with the bad.  Can’t we depend upon the Judge of the earth to do right?”

And you know how this goes.  Abraham and God go back and forth, as Abraham negotiates the lowest possible number for God to spare Sodom.  From 50, Abraham asks God to spare the cities if 45 are there.  God agrees.

From 45, Abraham asks for 40.  God agrees.  Then 30, and again God agrees.  Then 20, and once more God says yes.  Then 10, and God says, “Okay, if there are 10 righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah I won’t destroy them.  I think Abraham is counting Lot’s family — his wife and two daughters, and some of Lot’s servants which he hopes are righteous.  So, maybe Lot’s immediate household will be enough to spare the city from God’s judgment and wrath.

The Incident at Sodom and The Destruction of the Cities

The visitors, which now number two instead of three, arrive at Sodom, and meet Lot, who insists they come to his house for dinner and a place to stay. While they are inside Lot’s house, men from the town gather in front of Lot’s home.

“Who are the good looking strangers that have come to visit you?” they ask.  “Send them out so we can have a big party with them (this is my paraphrase to keep this G-rated).  Lot protests and instead offers his daughters, which is a terrible thing to do by any account and even in that day.

But the men of Sodom demand that the handsome strangers come out.  In their desparate attempt to get at Lot’s guests, they try to crash the front door of Lot’s house.  The angels pull Lot back inside, and strike all of the mob blind so that they can’t find the door.

With that problem solved, and with the evidence mounting that Sodom is indeed a wicked place, the angels tell Lot to get his family together and leave immediately.  “Flee for the hills” is their actual advice.  But Lot says, “We’ll never make it to the hills before disaster falls on us, too.  How about I stop off at Zoar instead?”  Reluctantly the angels agree, but warn Lot’s family not to look back on the destruction that is to befall Sodom and Gomorrah.

You know the rest of the story.  Lot’s family leaves, fire and brimstone rain down from the heavens, and Sodom and Gomorrah are piles of smoldering ruins.  But, unfortunately, Lot’s wife cannot help herself, and looks back.  She is turned into a pillar of salt for doing so, while Lot and his two daughters trudge ahead to Zoar.  There the story turns even uglier for Lot and his daughters, but we’ll stop there because we’ve had enough salacious material for one day.

The Back Story

Okay, so what do we know about all of this and the justice of God.  Plus, God’s mercy, too.  Both are in this story, and both are important to the nation of Israel.

First, let’s look at the cities themselves.  Sodom and Gomorrah were part of a group of five cities called the Pentapolis.  The cities were Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Bela — also known as Zoar.  So, when Lot flees Sodom, he’s really not going very far, and he stays within the Cities of the Plain, as these were also known.

Secondly, what was the problem there?  Well, it’s obvious that some inappropriate activity was taking place in both of those cities, as we can tell from the visit of the two angels.  And, most of us would say that is why God destroyed them.

But in Jewish literature, these cities were not only places of immorality, which are not even mentioned in the Jewish writings, but were known as places that were inhospitable to strangers, and had disregard for the poor, and disadvantaged among them.  Among their crimes it is reported that in Sodom, wealthy merchants would give beggars a bar of gold with their name on it.  But in a cruel conspiracy, they would refuse to sell the beggar any food, and he would eventually starve to death.  When that happened, they simply retrieved the bar of gold, and waited for their next victim.

They were also guilty of violence and bloodshed, and Abraham had saved the King of Sodom and his army from defeat, and rescued his nephew Lot in the process. So, these were not nice people if you were a stranger in their town.

Interestingly, Sodom and Gomorrah are also mentioned in Islamic writings, and there in addition to the sins of immorality, their other sins are listed as: gambling by playing backgammon, racing pigeons, holding fights between dogs, rams or roosters; immodesty and showing off by not covering their private parts in front of other people of the same sex, entering bathhouses naked, and opening the shirt to show the chest; wearing long pants which drag on the ground out of pride or arrogance; cheating with regard to weights and measures; and whistling with the fingers.  Apparently, whistling with the fingers is a bad thing to do.

Our Role in  God’s Justice and Mercy

But, back to our story.  This Sodom and Gomorrah story is a great example of God’s justice and mercy.  Let’s look at justice first.

We often confuse the idea of justice with punishment.  As in “I’ll be glad when justice is finally done, and he gets what’s coming to him.”  But justice is not punishment.

Punishment is just that, punishment.  Punishment is also called “retribution.”  And the system of justice that administers punishment is called a system of “retributive justice.”  That’s pretty much what we have in our criminal justice system here in the United States.  Les could put the fine point on that general statement, because there are instances of mercy, leniency, compassion, and so forth exhibited in the criminal justice system, but generally, if you do the crime, you expect to do the time (or some equivalent thereof).

But the idea of justice isn’t about punishment, it’s about fairness.  A just society is a society that treats all of its citizens alike.  That’s why the civil rights movement was a struggle for justice — African Americans were denied the right to vote, the right to eat in public restaurants, the right to stay in public accommodations, and the right to attend public schools.  We in the United States treated one segment of our population differently than the majority, and that was a social injustice.

So, a just society is a society that treats all of its members with the same degree of fairness.

God’s justice is also a fair treatment of all his creation.  Violate God’s laws and there is a price to pay.  Even natural law applies fairly and across the board.  Take gravity for instance.  Gravity works for all of us.  Jump out one of these windows and you will fall down, not up.  Regardless of your race, creed, religion, or national origin.  Gravity applies to all.

Jesus pointed out that God sends the rain on the “just and the unjust.”  Aren’t we glad rainfall, which we need desparately, isn’t reserved just for the righteous?  Our yards might look worse than they do now!  God is a just God in the administration of his Creation and natural law.

Okay, so why is God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah?  First, this is before the Law given to Moses, so it’s not because they’re breaking the Ten Commandments.  But, there is still a law, a standard, that God expects to uphold.  The story of Noah and the flood is an account of God’s judgment and punishment of a world gone wild.

But what makes this story interesting is not that God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah, but that God almost doesn’t.  If there are 50 righteous people living in a city of at least thousands, then God will spare the city.  Or if there are 45, or 40, or 30, or 20, or 10.  Ten righteous people (probably meaning men, and later the number required to start a synagogue), then God will spare the city.

God’s mercy is greater than God’s wrath.  Why, because God’s mercy is also part of God’s justice.  Justice demands that all be treated the same, that all be held to the same standard.

Judgment determines if the standard has been met.  If not, the person, community, or nation is deemed to have violated the law of God, and there is punishment for that.

The late Ray Anderson, brilliant professor of theology at Fuller Seminary, says that the wrongdoer cannot escape judgment.  Judgment says, “What you have done is wrong.”  God’s judgment is based on his even-handedness with his creation.  The Bible says, “God is no respecter of persons.”  Which means it doesn’t matter who you are, how much money you have, how smart you are, how much you’ve achieved, who your daddy was, or any of those things by which we measure people and show favoritism.

“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” Paul says in Romans 3:23.  And he also adds, “The wages of sin is death” in Romans 6:23.  So, there’s the judgment, and the punishment, both part of God’s justice.

But, Paul also adds, “But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  (Romans 6:23)  There’s the mercy.  There is no doubt we are sinners.  There is no doubt that the penalty for sin, the wages (which means what we have earned for our sin) is death.  We can’t change either of those facts.  So, we have been judged and sentenced.  But, that’s where mercy comes in.  God desires mercy.  God provides a way.  God sends Jesus.  Jesus lives, dies, rises again, all to demonstrate that the words of Hosea the prophet are true:

“For I desire mercy, not sacrifice….” — Hosea 6:6

But, God’s mercy also includes us.  In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and God’s being willing to save the cities if there were as few as 10 righteous people there, God’s mercy is made available by the presence of God’s people.

It’s the New Testament idea of being salt and light.  Of the Kingdom of God as the mustard seed that starts small, but grows to be a huge tree.  It’s the idea of a little leaven leavens the whole loaf.  There is a quality to the community of faith that carries with it access to the mercy of God on behalf of others.

You and I, this church, we are vital to this community.  We are the salt and light, we are the leaven in the lump of dough, we are the mustard seed, we are the preservers of humankind.  And, not just us, but all others in all other communities like ours.  We are God’s people and we preserve this Creation of God’s.  Our presence makes possible God’s mercy to those who rebel against him.

But we cannot be salt that has lost its flavor, or lights that have gone dark. We cannot be dead yeast, for the bread will not be affected.  Our action, our activity in this community lived as God’s representatives has a preserving, merciful effect on all around us.

If God can find 50, or 45, or 40, or 30, or 20, or even 10 people who love him and live in right relationship with him and with others, then God’s mercy is still available.  Hope for the future still prevails, the message of salvation still goes out, and God still stays his punishment.

That’s something for us to think about in our world gone wild.  God desires mercy, not sacrifice.  And we can help make that mercy a reality for our community, our state, our nation, our world.

Sermon: Answering the Wrong Question

The lame man answered the wrong question when Jesus asked him, “Do you want to be well?” Sometimes we do the same thing.

Answering the Wrong Question
John 5:1-9

1Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 2Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.

5One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

7″Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

8Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath….

The Setting of Today’s Story

Jesus had traveled to Jerusalem for a feast day, possibly the Passover, but we’re not sure.  In any event, it was an occasion on which Jews gathered in Jerusalem, and so Jesus goes there, too.

John then shifts his focus, like a movie director giving us a preview of what is about to happen.  John tells us that in Jerusalem, and actually very close to the Temple, is a place called the Sheep Gate.  The Sheep Gate is probably where sheep for Temple sacrifice were brought in — kind of a one-way trip for most of them, I’m certain.

Prayer for the Opening of Court on October 19, 2009

I have been asked to offer the prayer for a new session of court, which opens Monday, October 19.  The courtroom and anterooms of our 156-year old courthouse have also been renovated, and this is the first day court sessions will be held in the refreshed space.  Here’s the prayer I will offer:

Almighty God and Heavenly Father,

We invite your presence here in this room today, but not because this is a place of worship.  These antique pews could hold an assembled congregation, but those who gather in this room regularly do not gather here for devotions.  We invite your presence today, even though this is not a place of religious practice, because the proceedings of this court require Divine wisdom and guidance.

For this is the place where the accused and their accusers meet, not for revenge or retribution, but for an impartial hearing and rightly-delivered verdict.
This is the place where the law of this land, and of this community, stands as the arbiter of disputes both great and small.
This is the place where the common good is preserved, and the conscience of a community challenged.

And so our prayer today is first a prayer of gratitude.
We are thankful we live in a nation where laws govern our actions and interactions.
We are thankful for a heritage of freedom, tempered with responsibility and mutuality.
We are thankful for those engaged in the calling of the law, and those who serve this court in particular —
— for judges past and present, officers of this court, and the attorneys who stand at this bar to plead their causes before this bench.
May they sense Your hand in their endeavors, and seek Your guidance in their lives.

Our prayer today is also a prayer of dedication.
This historic building, a constant presence on Main Street generation-after-generation, bears powerful witness to our hope for order and decency.
This sanctuary of struggle-and-tears has seen families united and torn asunder; lives redeemed and destroyed; and dreams realized or denied.

For this is the place where truth and mercy meet.
This is the place where justice is done.

And even though the appearance of this court room has changed, let there be more than an appearance that justice is being done here.

Lord, we hear again the words of the prophet Micah —

He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

May this court and this courtroom be filled with the confidence of Your wisdom, the generosity of Your mercy, and the power of Your love.

Bless this nation we love so dearly, and those whom we have chosen to guide her path.  May peace come in our lifetime, and may Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

This is our prayer today, and we make it in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.