opc blog

Listen to the sermon:

Marthame Sanders (Marthame’s sermons and other reflections are also available on his blog)

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
Luke 14:25-33

What would it mean to have no control at all?

There’s something about being the father of a newborn that makes you ask this question. First, Put yourself in the place of the infant. You are utterly helpless. You have no control over muscle movements; in fact, you’re not even aware that the hand that just went past your face is yours, and is attached to your arm, which is attached to your body. You can’t even hold up your own head. Your eyes don’t focus; in fact, the lenses of your eyes are clear. Nothing is filtered out; it’s just a sheer mass of bright light that assaults you. Your sense of hearing needs work. Where adults can filter out many of the echoes in natural sound, because of years of training the brain, for you, it’s a constant barrage of noise. You can’t eat, move, clothe, bathe, change, clean without someone doing it for you. I’ve heard it described this way: that human life starts with four trimesters. Three of them are in the womb. As a newborn, you have little, if any, control.

Or maybe we’re looking at this all backwards. As a newborn, you control everything. Need to eat? Just cry. They’ll come running. What time is it? 3 am? No matter; let that scream rip. They won’t stay asleep for long. They may think they control you, but when was the last time they went out to dinner, just the two of them? Can they even go down to the basement without bringing along a monitor, in case you decide it’s time to be changed? And how about the way you can get them to babble like complete idiots, simply by opening your eyes? “Coochie-coochie-coo!” As a newborn, you have all the control in the world! You’ll never have them at your every beck and call this way ever again.

There’s something about the desire to be in control that captures our imaginations. For the past few weeks, we’ve been exploring this theme of freedom, what it means to be “unbound” from all that holds us down, to be completely free in faith and free in Christ and free to live and love the world as God desires for us. And it’s my hunch that, lurking behind this idea of freedom, just barely out of sight, is the question of control. For many of us, being unbound, means being freed from the control that others have over us: over our time, our money, our lives. Therefore, freedom, we think, means that we are in control of our own destinies. We can shape and mold our worlds to our own liking. We can work hard enough and long enough to succeed and deserve the rewards that come our way.

And this desire for control, for self-sufficiency, is something that most people have in common, regardless of culture; but our own society seems to be gripped by it. We are newborns, infants, hating the fact that we need others to help us at every turn, and knowing that fulfillment comes in the freedom of adulthood, taking care of ourselves and our every need.

But is this idea of control ever possible? We have no control over where we are born, or to whom, or in what time period. We have no control over the things that come to us easily, or the things that make our heart sing, or over the things for which we have to compensate, or the things that turn our stomachs. We have no say in any of this.

That’s not to say that we don’t have responsibility. We have control over how hard we work, sure. We have control over how we use or abuse our bodies and what we put into them. We have a choice in the way we respond to the situations we encounter, whether that be with an overarching sense of integrity, or with a morality that depends on the situation and our needs at that time.

But in terms of the bigger picture, which one of us can look back and say that we have been in control of our destinies up to this point? Take this morning, for example. Maybe you made the decision to get out of bed this morning, to come here, to this church, or to read this blog, on this particular day. But what about all the decisions that preceded that?

Why are you in Atlanta in the first place? What first brought you to this church? Were you born into it? Did you find us online? Were you looking for Presbyterians, or just churches in the neighborhood? And if you’ve come to this place again and again, what caused that? Was it the welcome you felt? What did you have to do with that? Or perhaps, most importantly, what in the world is it that shaped you so that you would even want to darken the door of a place of worship on a long holiday weekend?

In the end, our search for ultimate freedom brings us to some odd conclusions. And if this is our goal, our primary desire in life, to be totally and utterly free, can we achieve it? Or maybe, more importantly, is this what we should aim for anyway?

The lesson from the gospel of Luke this morning tackles these ideas of freedom and control, but in an expected way. Jesus and the disciples have gathered this large following. Between Jesus’ teaching, his willingness to take on the religious leaders of the day, his inclusion of those who are marginalized, and the fame that has spread about him and his miraculous healing powers, the world of ancient Galilee is set on its head. His popularity is soaring. He has changed from an itinerant rabbi to the leader of a movement.

And it’s at this moment that he decides to spell it out for them, to let them know what it is that they are getting into. In other words, he is making sure they understand the cost of discipleship.

“You want to be a part of this movement?” He says, “That’s great. Just know what it is you’re signing up for.” And it’s there that these two examples come up: the man who wants to build a tower and so begins by calculating the cost of materials and labor; the king who contemplates battle and starts by measuring up his opponent. If you want to get going, you need to take some time to think through whether or not this is what you really want to do.

It is right then that the Jesus of our imaginations, the soft, cuddly, welcomer of children and shepherd of lost sheep begins to take on this unexpected edge. “You must hate your father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, your own life!” So much for traditional family values…“Take up your cross. Give away all your possessions. You want to follow me? Take a moment and see if you’re really willing to do what it takes, to build that tower, to fight that battle, to be my disciple.”

Now, I hope we engage with the lessons of Scripture enough to be aware that there is more than meets the eye here in this text. There are thousands of years separating us from the culture of Jesus’ time. But let’s start with what assaults us out the gate: the word “hate.” It’s so strong! Perhaps it means something different, softer, easier in the original Greek? Nope. It means hate. Not dislike, or find distasteful, but hate. The truth is that Jesus is engaging in what commentator calls “prophetic hyperbole” – that is, overstating things in order to make a point. And for Jesus’ contemporaries, this point became quite clear as he entered Jerusalem: Are you willing to give up your life and all that you hold dear for the sake of this movement you wanted to follow when we were back in Nazareth? And the answer is predictable. One by one, including his disciples, they all fall away.

For us, the question might come to us this way: do we love God more than the people and things that we hold dear? Do the relationships we have and the stuff we hoard reflect the priorities we claim? Now, this language about hating family might come across as a slap in the face to us. But there are those of us who know very well what it means. For the sake of our own healing, we have had to separate ourselves from unhealthy, abusive relationships. “Hatred” may be a strong word, but there are those of us who have had to cut ties with family; something that is far more easily said than done.

And even for those of us who consider our families relatively healthy, places of the kind of support and encouragement and unconditional love that they ought to be, every one of us has that crazy uncle or in-law or cousin or sibling that we would have nothing to do with if we weren’t related through blood or marriage. Family, for good reason, has a hold on us. And there are times when we need to break free from its grip.

Similarly, our possessions often claim ownership of us, too. Family fights are one thing; family fights over money are something else altogether. Money can come between friends, business partners, colleagues. It can create jealousy, envy, paranoia. Even so, we crave it. We seem to treat our possessions as something to be hoarded so that we might ultimately be free, be in control of our destinies.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think that money is actually quite neutral. Scriptures says that it’s the love of money that is the root of all evil, not money itself. There is also much good that can be done with money. The question is, in our drive to have more and more of it, do we hold ourselves unwaveringly to a standard of generosity? Do our finances reflect our values? Or are they simply one more thing that ties us up in knots, adding to our pile of anxiety, just another reason why we need more so that we can get that ever-elusive control over our lives?

Let me put it this way: how much of your money do you give away? I’m not talking about to the church; I’m talking about overall. What percent of your income would you estimate goes to charitable causes? Twenty? Ten percent? Less than one?

Consider the story of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. In 1731, he made 30 pounds. His costs that year were 28 pounds, so he gave away 2 pounds to the poor. In 1732, his salary doubled to 60 pounds. But he had learned to live on 28 pounds, so he gave away 32. In 1733, it rose to 90 pounds. So he gave away 62 pounds. Over the course of his lifetime, John Wesley’s income was as high as 1400 pounds. But his expenses rarely rose above 30; he would give the rest away.

Can we even fathom considering the way of John Wesley? Or are we waiting to be generous until we have “enough”, whatever “enough means? We think that, by virtue of having more and more, we will eventually free ourselves from external control; but is the truth that we have ceded control to our possessions?

There is a reason that Jesus talks about money more than anything else, other than the kingdom of God.

And in all this is the lesson of the newborn. It’s not really clear who is in control. The problem, even the danger, is in thinking that we are really free when it reality we have handed the reins over to something that is now steering us in directions we don’t want to go. That’s the very definition of addiction: something else has power over us such that, even when it destroys us, we cannot change course.

To live lives that are truly unbound, to be utterly freed from the people and things that hold us captive, doesn’t mean grabbing the steering wheel ourselves. If God is our co-pilot, we’ve still got our hand on the rudder. Freedom means recognizing that it is only in Christ that we are truly free.

If we place all of these things we want to control, these people, these cares, these anxieties, these hopes into God’s hands, then we’ll begin to see that they were never in our hands to begin with. That’s why they keep feel like they’re slipping through our fingers; our hands, simply put, aren’t big enough.

So let go. Let go, as the saying goes, and let God. That is what it means to be free.

Amen.

Listen to the sermon:

Marthame Sanders (Marthame’s sermons and other reflections are also available on his blog)

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14

How many of you watched the Braves’ game on Friday night? If you read the blog two weeks ago while I wrote about hockey, you might be wondering if I’ve got any other metaphors that don’t have anything to do with sports. Not today.

But anyway, two days ago the Braves were playing the Florida Marlins, trying to recover from their embarrassing loss to the Rockies on Wednesday, where they were up 10-1 and lost 12-10. They weren’t faring very well this night, either. The result ended up being a 7-1 loss for the Braves.

But that’s besides the point. The Braves’ closer and future Hall of Famer Billy Wagner had come into the game in the late innings. This time was a bit unusual; he’s usually there to seal up a win, not staunch the bleeding of a loss. In the midst of his outing on Friday, he strikes out one Mike Stanton, one of the Marlins. Not so remarkable; Wagner strikes out a lot of people. But, it turns out, that was the point. At that moment, he became the all-time strikeout record holder for left-handed relievers. A typically specific baseball stat, almost too focused to really be all that interesting; but it is impressive nonetheless: more than 1000 strikeouts pitching 1-2 innings at a time. Usually, when you break a record in baseball, you toss that ball into home plate and they set it aside for you to take home as a souvenir. The catcher, David Ross, and the umpire, Tim McClelland, both tried to get Billy Wagner to do just that. Wagner refused, and kept on pitching with that ball. He walked the next guy with the same ball, and then, after Hanley Ramirez fouled it down the third base line, Wagner picked it up and tossed it into the stands.

After the game, he was asked about the whole scene, to which he said, “We’re getting our (butts) kicked” – he didn’t say butts; that’s what the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said – “it’s raining, let’s go. It’s stupid. Who in their right mind makes a big deal out of doing something they’re supposed to do in the first place?”

I love that quote, that seemed to come so off the cuff: “Who in their right mind makes a big deal out of doing something they’re supposed to do in the first place?”

Actually, Billy, I think the answer is, most of us.

I think we like to think we’re willing to brush accomplishments aside as “no big deal”. We may even say as much, but that’s usually when people are making a big deal out of them. For most of us, we do like to be noticed:

• “Yes, indeed, I did get straight A’s this semester, and thank you for noticing.”
• “My sales numbers are up this quarter, and yes, everyone else’s numbers are down. Thanks for mentioning it. I have been working hard.”
• “Yes, you’re right; retirement is a big deal. I was kind of hoping for more than a watch, but the farewell party is a nice touch.”
• “Thank you, Mom. I did clean up my room every day this week, just like you want me to. And I would appreciate it if my allowance would be adjusted accordingly.”

When we do excel, even if it’s in an area where we’re supposed to be excellent, we tend to crave the attention. We expect to be honored, or at the very least, thanked, for doing so.

And it doesn’t have to be as grand as all that. I remember Elizabeth and I were going somewhere, stuck in Atlanta traffic. The right lane next to us was blocked, and cars were trying to merge into our lane. I waited before moving forward, and the car next to me pulled in front of us. I was feeling particularly magnanimous for this generous act, expecting some kind of acknowledgement in return: a wave of the hand, a flashing of the brake lights, something. What I got, instead, was nothing. I don’t remember what I said, but it was probably an ecstatically sarcastic, “You’re Welcome!” To which Elizabeth said, “Let me get this straight: you let that person in front of you not because it’s the right thing to do, but because you wanted them to thank you?”

I’m sure I must’ve had some brilliant retort to her observation, but for the moment, it escapes me. In any case, I’m willing to bet that I’m not the only one here this morning who has borne a grudge, even if only for a few moments, for not being recognized, even if it’s something we ought to do anyway.

So guess what? Jesus is talking to us this morning. In the lesson from Luke, he is wandering from village to village, teaching. And in the custom of that time, he is invited to the house of one of the village leaders, in this case, a Pharisee. As with most wandering teachers, Jesus was being tested. The village notables would gather and ask their visiting guest a series of questions, all of them designed to determine whether or not his teaching was in line with acceptable wisdom.

But before they get to do that here, Jesus takes note of how they choose their seats based on assumptions of honor. Those who are the most powerful sit closest to the host, while those who are of marginal or no authority sit on the fringes or are waiting outside. And Jesus comments on all this, even offering some practical suggestions for host and guests alike: “If you’re invited to a banquet, sit at the back. That way, if the host brings you forward, you’ll be that much more impressive to everyone there. On the other hand, if you sit up front, the host may send you to the back. How humiliating that would be! And, if you’re hosting, don’t just invite people you like, or people from whom you expect something in return. Invite the outcasts, those whom you see peering in the window right now: the poor, the lame. And if you do that, you show true hospitality. Because true hospitality is borne of generosity, not out of quid pro quo.”

At first glance, Jesus is simply making observations about the cultural norms of the day, and suggesting that a very different kind of social ordering ought to be at work for faithful people. A banquet where the hosts and guests behave this way would very closely mirror the social justice that the prophets envisioned and preached. It’s not based on who your ancestors were, or your family’s place in society. It is based in something else entirely: the reality that all of these folks, no matter how great or small we might think them, are children of the God whom we serve and are, therefore, worthy of dignity.

It would be a convicting thing to stop right there today, to examine our own habits of invitation and social ordering, to see if we behave more like the Pharisees, or more like the scene that Jesus paints. I think it is fair to suggest that there are parallels with our own time, where some are tempted to believe that by virtue of who their ancestors were, or because of their citizenship, or faith, or political identity, or denomination, that they are due some sense of honor, that they ought not only to have a place at the table, but the best place at the table.

And yet, I think most of us would reject those kinds of assumptions, knowing full-well that it isn’t race, or nationality, or confession, or good breeding, or good politics, or good theology that makes us righteous. But I think we tend to replace these kinds of out-moded notions with a sort of meritocracy. That is, we deserve our place at the table because we have earned it. We have worked hard. We have studied at the highest level and gone on to get advanced degrees. We have been given status by our colleagues, whether that’s passing the bar, or being ordained. We are good people, never harming anyone, and doing our best to treat everyone right. In fact, we do a pretty good job of doing the things that Jesus says we ought to do. Surely that grants us a seat at the table! Or maybe you find yourself saying, “Nobody has given me anything; everything I’ve accomplished, I’ve earned. And now I just want to sit down and eat.”

Here’s the sobering reality: none of these things get us to the table. Or borrowing Billy Wagner’s words, we don’t get to make a “big deal out doing what [we’re] supposed to do in the first place.” None of these things make us righteous. The only thing that gets us a ticket to the banquet is the invitation of the host.

And that’s where the story gets interesting. On the surface, Jesus is simply talking about a meal in a village, and critiquing the social order of the day. But the reality is, and everyone at that table knew it, Jesus is talking on a much deeper level of what it means to sit in the presence of God. There were visions that the prophets had laid out; Isaiah spoke of that great day when all of the nations, not just the Israelites, will feast on the mountain of God. That vision of Isaiah had fallen out of favor by the first century and had been reinterpreted. Instead, it was taught that the Israelites alone would be invited, and not even all of them: the crippled, the blind, the lepers would not be welcomed.

And as for the vision that all nations would be welcomed, the idea that was more comfortable to those of Jesus’ time was of the angel of death coming to wipe out those other nations so that the feast wouldn’t be disturbed.

This isn’t just Jesus’ commentary on the way one particular host decided to draw up his guest-list, or even the way that the guests jockeyed among themselves for the positions of privilege. Instead, Jesus is giving us a glimpse of the heavenly banquet, the table that sits in the middle of the kingdom of God, and who it is that makes God’s guest list.

It isn’t anything we say or do that makes us righteous. It is God’s invitation to join in the feast that does; and anything we say or do after that ought to be a reflection of the joy of knowing we’ve been included.

And that, I believe, is good news. Because ultimately it means that the guest list is long. And you, no matter what anyone else might say, are invited to the party. You can’t earn your way to the front, or even to the table at all. And you can’t out-jockey someone else for position. And, here’s the most surprising thing of all: even if you’ve done all these things, assumed your place, pushed others out of the way, then this table is still for you, too. You might want to rethink how it is that you got your invitation, but you’re still invited.

This is the idea that is at the very heart of the faith we proclaim. Christians are not Christians because we deserve to be, or because we’re better than those who are not. Christians are Christians because we recognize how imperfect we are and yet, even so, God has reached out to us. It’s neither a false humility nor a lesson in how worthless we are. Instead, it’s a self-worth that is rooted in being beloved of God, no matter what anyone else might say.

Can you know that? Can you embrace that?

Because once we really know that we are invited to the party, that’s when we start throwing parties of our own, feasts and banquets that look a lot more like the ones that Jesus himself would throw.

That’s what church is supposed to be, not a respite for the self-righteous, “holier than thou” crowd, but a community that does its best to mirror heavenly celebrations, casting aside assumptions of privilege and honor and merit for the sake of being sure that all have the chance to be fed.

If this is what we do, if this is genuinely the feast that we seek, then we begin to get a glimpse of freedom in Christ. We begin to know what it means to be unbound from what society or habit or tradition or conventional wisdom tells us is proper and good and decent and in order. And that’s true for us whether we typically find ourselves shunted to the sides or tend to assume our place at the front of the line.

We are free from all that. And when we know that we are free, we can really turn loose, climb up onto the mound, even in the middle of a losing game, and even when it’s raining, no longer bound by the approval we seek or the records we break.

Oh, and by the way, just to finish up that story: Billy Wagner may not have thought that that particular baseball was worth the fuss. But the Braves front office thought differently. They tracked it down immediately and bartered with the fan who had caught it. So Wagner ends up with the ball anyway, whether he wanted it or not. May we live our lives so freed to serve God that if those acknowledgements do come, it’s not something we expect, but rather a surprising gift, one that gives us the desire to invite more and more to the feast that will ultimately feed us all.

Amen.

Neill McKay

Gracious God, we are here, gathered in your community to strengthen one another, to grow in faith with one another, because we don’t always pray as we should, we don’t always follow the spirit of the law as Jesus taught us. We ask for the Spirit to fill us with the confidence that yes, Lord, you do hear our prayers, and that we live our lives in the confidence that Jesus Christ is our savior.

God of mercy…hear our prayers.

Faithful God, you formed this church in the tradition of the disciples and the apostles, yet filled its pews with the likes of us, the sinful. But we are here, Lord, because we want to do better, we want to unbind ourselves from that which holds each of us back as individuals and as a community. Spirit of the living and active God, we ask that you give us the passion to faithfully endure all trials as we honestly try to build a church worthy of your son Jesus Christ.

God of mercy…hear our prayers.

Compassionate and wonderful God, give us the vision and the honor of knowing your greatness. Let us be delighted with the wonderful things Christ has done for us, and for the simple and great things the Holy Spirit does in our lives each and everyday. Lord we ask, in the name of your Son, that you accept our humble and sincere thankfulness for the glory you show in our lives.

God of mercy…hear our prayers.

Reconciler of brokenness, healer of infirmities, and comforter of torment, we ask your mercies upon our world, in our communities, and in our lives. We ask for understanding and faith in our hearts when our wants don’t correspond to your divine will. We are thankful to consider ourselves your servants, so we ask that you empower us to know your call and to follow the pattern set forth in your son Jesus Christ.

God of mercy…hear our prayers.

Lord of all creation, we ask your divine intercession in the Middle East, as Iran powers up its nuclear power plant, as Israel and the Palestinian Authority agree to peace talks in Washington, and as our combat troops leave Iraq. Please, O Lord, you gave humankind the knowledge for nuclear energy. We ask that all nuclear energy be used according to your will and not manupliated for national pride or evil or hate. We ask that your reconciling power overwhelm the leaders of both Palestinians and Israelis, that a peace come forth from another round of talks, and that each person understand that mutual respect and follow the teaching of Jesus Christ to love thy neighbor.

God of Mercy

Hear our prayer.

Lets now confess what we believe useing the prayer Jesus Taught us to say,

Our Father, who art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil:
For Thine is the kingdom,
And the power,
And the glory,
Forever.
-Amen.

Listen to the sermon:

Marthame Sanders (Marthame’s sermons and other reflections are also available on his blog)

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Luke 13:10-17

If you want to train an elephant, start when they’re young.

That’s what you come to church for, right? Good, solid, practical advice! Now, don’t be so quick to dismiss this teaching. Maybe one of you is thinking of starting a circus; perhaps one of you is expecting to inherit your uncle’s prized pachyderm; maybe you think you’ll win this magnificent creature on a radio call-in show. You can call him Stampy, and he can sleep nestled between the cars in the garage. But if not, maybe this advice can still have some helpful meaning for you today.

Many of you have heard this already, I’m sure. But have you ever seen a magnificent elephant at the circus with one ankle bound to a simple wooden stake and wonder why they don’t just rip it out of the ground and go on a stampede? It’s because the trainer starts when the elephant is young. The elephant calf is tied to a steel stake, one that is, in fact, strong enough to withstand their brute force. They learn very quickly that they can’t yank it out of the ground, and seem to be resigned to their fate. Slowly, as the elephant grows, the trainer replaces the steel stake with lighter and lighter materials until what is left is a simple wood stake that could easily be yanked out at a moment’s notice, should the elephant decide so. But by this time, they’ve given up trying. And so the elephant, with a simple trick of the mind, is bound by something that really has no hold on them.

This morning, we begin a new sermon series. In a few weeks, we’re going to start reading this book, Unbinding Your Heart, as a congregation. We already have four groups scheduled throughout the week, and if there is more interest, we will organize more. The overall theme of the book is how is it that we take this faith, no matter how small we think it might be, as it resides within us, and set it free to work its power and wonder in our lives and in the lives of those around us. And so, as we look forward to this study together in September, we’re going to spend the next few Sundays painting a picture of what it looks like to be “unbound”, set free, in our own lives and in our own faith.

Maybe this doesn’t speak to you at all. Maybe you’re thinking, “I’m not even sure that I believe any of this nonsense.” I think you’re probably in good company here today. And if so, then I think these conversations are for you in particular.

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s jump back to the gospel lesson for a moment. There is Jesus teaching again in the synagogue. This is the third time in Luke that Jesus runs afoul of the synagogue leaders. And as he’s teaching, he sees this woman come hobbling in. For eighteen years, it seems, she has been afflicted with a crippling kind of scoliosis. And rather than ignore her and keep on teaching, or, indeed, rather than even waiting until the end of the lesson and going over to her, he calls her over and proclaims, “You are set free from your ailment.”

And she was – standing up straight, and praising God!

For Jesus, there was no separation between what he was preaching and what he was doing. He was traveling around the Galilee proclaiming that a new day in God’s creation was already at work – a new way of being for each of us. And so that folks didn’t get too caught up in making this a purely mental exercise, a simple reorientation of an outlook on life, Jesus made it clear that this new way of being, this re-creation, has implications for the way that we live. And on that day, this unnamed woman happened to be the living example of God at work in the world.

The amazing thing is that the conversation that ensues has nothing to do with what has just taken place. No one is debating whether or not Jesus healed, or by what means. Instead, for the synagogue leader, this is all about following the proper ancient protocol. “We don’t heal on the Sabbath,” he says. “This could have waited until tomorrow!” And for the religious teaching at the time, he was absolutely right. We tend to get sidetracked by these arguments. By simple virtue of historical accident, we automatically take Jesus’ side. And we assume that this truth must have been just as self-evident. But the reality is that, in the way that cultural assumptions had aligned themselves, Jesus was fully in the wrong. The synagogue leader was absolutely right.

What Jesus demonstrates in this conflict, however, are two things. The first is the people’s hypocrisy. They already break the Sabbath, worried about the health of their livestock, untying them and leading them to water. And yet they would do that and ignore the plight of this “daughter of Abraham”, this fellow child of God? Those who oppose him are humiliated by this line of logic, we are told.

And there is yet another point to Jesus’ whole approach here. And that’s this: the letter of the law has its purpose; but if we betray the Spirit at work behind that law, then we’ve missed the whole point of it. As he says elsewhere, his ministry isn’t about abolishing the law; it’s about perfecting it. Practicing the rules, as it were, has a point: the desired effect is to lead us to faithfulness.

But if, instead, we follow the rules, and cease to follow God, then we’re way off track. They are no longer tools for our freedom in God, but tricks to bind us and weigh us down.

Which brings us back to the elephant.

Can you see yourself in that image? Maybe there’s something tied around your ankle that, if you pulled hard enough, it would surprise you how easily it came out of the ground. But by virtue of circumstance, you’ve been trained to think that there’s nothing that can set you free. It could be a difficult childhood, an addiction that keeps clawing its way back into your life, assumptions that others or society in general make about you because of your gender or age or race or background or income or life experience.

What you have thought was an iron-clad trap is, in fact, something that would splinter easily, if only you could retrain those muscles to react as they’re supposed to.

We can see some of this freeing at work in the reading from the prophet Jeremiah. We catch this prophet early in his formation, before he becomes this legendary teller of truths to people in power, pronouncing God’s dissatisfaction with the way things are going. And even at this early moment, as God speaks to Jeremiah, proclaiming him as prophet not just to his own people but, as it says, “to the nations”, Jeremiah is already bound. “I’m only a boy,” he says. “I’m too young to have anything valuable to say to anybody.” And in essence, God says, “You’re right, in a way; because it’s not about what you are going to say. I’m going to send you, and I will tell you what to say.”

And that’s the truth about our desire to be free. Perhaps we are captive to our own fears and desires; but we’re not the ones who set ourselves free. Later on, Paul will say to early Christians, “For freedom, Christ has set us free.” It is God working through us that gives us the courage and the desire to be free for the sake of loving God and living out God’s love.

This is the freedom that comes to the unnamed woman in the synagogue, weighed down by this crippling disease. Can we find some connection with her? Or are we too caught up in the literal meaning here? Do we know either in our own lives or in the lives of those whom we love a physical ailment that has earnestly yearned for healing all this years, but has not been cured?

Where is Jesus in the cancer, or the arthritis, or the depression? “I’d like to stand up straight, too,” you may find yourself saying. “Where’s my miracle?”

The truth is that there’s no easy answer to your question, and there is not nearly enough time to address this fully at this moment. I do believe that there are healings that defy explanation. And I have seen them at work. But they are the exception, not the rule. And I have also seen healings that can be explained by virtue of medical science, or counseling and therapy, or medication and good habits of diet and exercise. And these are no less the work of God than anything else we might see.

But let us not get too weighed down by the literal implications to miss the life-altering meaning at work in this lesson. What is it that ties you down? Is it the daily concerns of making ends meet, of a family member or friend that seems to be in permanent crisis? Is it anxiety that cripples, fear that holds you captive? Do you find yourself bound by a deep-seated need to be liked, or to be right? Is it grief for a loss that happened years ago that still won’t heal? Does resentment have a hold on you, a wrong against you that you are still waiting to see righted, or just a general sense of anger at the injustice you see all around you, where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and nice guys and gals finish last?

If any of these things have triggered a nerve within you, then you’ve got good company here today. Everyone of us, I suspect, is weighed down, whether we know it or not. And for many of us, I also suspect, we’re like that elephant, tied down to a stake that really holds no power over us; we’ve just been trained otherwise. If so, then these conversations, this book study, is for you. It’s a chance to engage with a group of fellow strugglers what it means to be set free in Christ, to know that the past, with all its burdens, really is behind us and that the future stands before us, unbound, full of hope and possibility and life and love. Are we willing to give it a tug?

Marthame Sanders (Marthame’s sermons and other reflections are also available on his blog)

Luke 12:49-56
Isaiah 5:1-7

What are you passionate about? What is it that gets you out of bed in the morning? What is it that thrills you, that excites you, that ignites passion within you?

When I was a kid, I would have answered “hockey”. I loved hockey. Adored it. And we had our own NHL franchise here in Atlanta for me to focus that passion on, the short-lived Atlanta Flames. As a family, we went to games all the time. My parents even had season tickets at one point. And when I wasn’t down at the Omni taking in a game in person, I was at home, poring over the annual media guides that were published each season, memorizing statistics with the obsessive passion of a first love, and listening to the radio play-by-play with Jiggs McDonald and Bernie “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion.

When the US Olympic team won the gold medal in 1980, people in Atlanta were surprised to find out that our national celebrity goalie, Jim Craig, was a draft pick of the Atlanta Flames. Not me – that was in the 1978 media guide. Fourth round, I believe…Seeing Jim Craig in an Atlanta Flames’ uniform was one of the highlights of my young life.

But within less than a year, there came a dark day in Atlanta sports history. It was announced that the Flames had been sold and would be moving to Calgary. No more Dan Bouchard, no more Brad Marsh, no more Willi Plett. Hockey was my first love; and hockey broke my heart.

What are you passionate about? What is that one thing that you would place above all else?

Is it God?

All summer we have been looking at the prophets of the Old Testament. We’ve spent time with Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea, and now, Isaiah. What hockey was to me at age ten, God was to these mystics their whole life long. This passion was so deeply embedded within them, so central to who they were, that it was even evident in their names: Elijah, which means Yahweh is my God; Elisha, God saves; Amos, burden; Hosea, salvation; Isaiah, Yahweh saves.

And as we’ve waded through some of the tough stuff these prophets have to offer, we’ve recognized the passion of one who is heartbroken over what has come to be. God has called the people to faithfulness, and they have turned away. And in the prophets’ heartbreak, we see God’s own heartbreak, the people’s betrayal of God’s unending love.

In our Isaiah passage this morning, the prophet even plays with a familiar image of love from that time, the vineyard. “I will sing a song of my beloved,” it begins. “I have cared for my vineyard, tended it, watered it; but it did not yield grapes that I could use, but bitter grapes, useless grapes. I am heartbroken. What should I do?” The question is to the people of Israel, who know what the response to unrequited love ought to be: turn your back on it. Move on. Let it go. But to their shock, the love spoken of here is not between two people, but between God and God’s people. They have unknowingly judged themselves as those who have been loved but do not return that love.

The prophet reminds them of the covenant they have been given. They were promised land, and God delivered. They were promised protection, and God made good. All they had to do was to keep faithful to their end of the bargain. But they haven’t. There hasn’t been the justice God desired; instead, the people have delivered bloodshed. God planted seeds for righteousness; but what the land yielded was the cries of the oppressed. The covenant has been broken. And so the same will happen to the vineyard of God’s love: walls will be torn down; it will be overgrown with briers and thorns; it will see no water from the skies.

And as the book of Isaiah progresses, this judgment comes to fruition. The nation is besieged, and the people are taken into exile in Babylon. The victories of their land have been turned into bitter defeat; so dramatically so, in fact, that the prophet’s teaching turns from judgment to comfort, from anger to sorrow, from heartbreak to heart-healing. It is not long before God is promising the return of God’s promises to God’s people.

It’s my assumption that what lies at the heart of the broken promises here is simply this: a lack of passion for God. And if we’re honest, we’re not that different from the ancient Israelites, are we? When the going is good, we have little time for God, because, well, why would we? When the going is tough, we might turn to God for comfort, but when the tide turns in our favor, do we stick with God? Or alternately, when things aren’t going our way, we might blame God for the downturn in our affairs, and so we might turn our back on God altogether.

What would it look like to have a passion for God at the center of our lives?

It would have been tough to displace my boyhood love of hockey with a love of God. I was fortunate enough in those early years to see both Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky play, arguably the two greatest players who ever played the game. Gordie Howe was in his fifties, his records behind him; Gretzky was a mere 18 years old, his records yet to come.

I recently heard this story about Gretzky from Malcolm Gladwell, the author of several books, including The Tipping Point and Blink, among others. Gladwell is a sociologist and psychologist who writes in his book Outliers on the meaning of greatness. And he tells the story of Wayne Gretzky, among others, as a possible lesson on how greatness is achieved. Gretzky had a passion for hockey, even greater than mine. When he was two years old, his parents would put him in front of the TV to watch hockey games. And when the game was over, he would burst into tears, so heartbroken was he that the game had ended. Gretzky spent every spare moment playing hockey and, when he wasn’t playing, he was thinking about hockey. There’s one moment in Gretzky’s career that stands out to Gladwell. In one game, Gretzky had the puck behind the goal and managed to shoot it off the back of the goalie and into the net. It was a miraculous shot. No one had ever done anything like that before. And the thing wasn’t that Gretzky was the only player capable of such a shot, but that no one had obsessed over hockey to the point that they would even think such a shot was possible!

It’s primarily from anecdotal evidence of Gretzky and others that Gladwell arrives at his 10,000 hours theory, that greatness comes not as much from gifts that we receive by birth, but by an obsessive passion to spend as much time as possible nurturing those gifts. Gretzky must’ve played well over 10,000 hours of hockey perfecting his craft. The Beatles, who were really nothing to marvel at in Liverpool in 1960, spent two years in Hamburg playing six nights a week for hours on end, easily amassed 10,000 hours of playing time that transformed them into the performing phenomenon that took the world by storm in 1962. Bill Gates, Robert Oppenheimer, Gladwell lifts up these and others as examples of those who may have had that God-given spark of brilliance, but nurtured that flame through hours and hours of honing a craft that eventually became world-famous.

I can’t help but wonder if there’s something similar in the passion these prophets brought  to their lives for God. I wonder if they were so enraptured with God’s desire that they easily spent those 10,000 hours crafting a life of faithful obedience in a way that bordered on obsession. Maybe “obsession” isn’t the right word; we’re too aware of disorders like OCD and with TV shows like Monk to get excited at the thought of being “obsessed” with something. But could we ignite, or re-ignite, a passion for God in our lives so much that our faithfulness becomes self-evident?

Have you ever had that kind of passion? Have there been seasons in your life which were marked by daily prayer, or daily Bible study, or being part of a weekly group that dug together into the Scriptures or into the issues that face you, that face society, with the kind of love that bordered on hunger, that you would no more skip a day of prayer than you would a healthy breakfast?

Or do you know this kind of passion in a different way? There are other areas of life, some times distractions, which demand our attention: our jobs, the 40-hour work week a myth of the past; the 24 hour news channels with their relentless urgency, with news and stock tickers sprinting by at the bottom of the screen; the speed and draw of technology and its wondrous, life-changing gizmos. Each of these may have that same kind of pull on us, and maybe we can learn something from our passion for these things. But we also know that there is implicit danger when these loves become obsessions, and when these obsessions become addictions. They move beyond something that we enjoy to something we confuse with the air we breathe and the water we drink and the faith we share, by supplanting them with the confused notion that we cannot live without them. That’s not just addiction; it’s idolatry. We are addicted to, we idolize, the things that occupy God’s rightful place in our lives.

And in this, we are no different from the people to whom Isaiah writes. God adores us. God loves us. But there are, for each of us, times when this love goes unrequited, when God desires fruits of faithfulness but the fruit we bear borders on the useless. This is true for each of us, no matter how strong or weak we might think ourselves in matters of faith.

But in this paradox lies the good news we celebrate. God’s love doesn’t run out. That’s the promise we celebrate each and every week. Yes, God is fed up with God’s people; but God’s promises in Scripture come not only in the promises of land and deliverance, but in the very person of Jesus. We are held to a standard of faithfulness, yes, and it is one for which we ought to strive. But when we miss the mark, God is still there, in the open arms of Jesus, offering us the chance to try again and again and again and again.

Which all leads me to my invitation to each of us this morning. I invite each of us to consider that we might cultivate within us the discipline and the focus that could ultimately forge us into the people that God would have us be. I’m not naïve enough to suggest that we, too, should strive for the kind of greatness that would dream up and execute the Presbyterian equivalent of a behind-the-net-goal. But I do think there’s something to be said for nurturing the passion for the things of God that will transform our lives. And our lives, so transformed, will transform our community; and our communities, so transformed, will change the world.

Next week, we’ll begin a new sermon series; this series is a companion to a book we’ll begin reading together as a congregation beginning in September, called Unbinding Your Heart: A Study in Prayer and Faith-Sharing. We will be offering multiple chances to read this book together in small groups – on Sunday mornings, on Thursday evenings, throughout the week. You’ll hear more about that in the next few weeks. But what this opportunity offers us, I believe, is a chance to kindle within each of us, within our church, within our community, and within our world, a passion for the things of God, and a faithfulness that returns to God the love that we have received.

May it be so. Amen.

Evan Carter

Luke 12:32-40
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20

            And yet another cherry, prophetic message for us this morning… Those of you visiting with us, we have been taking a look at various Old Testament prophets all summer.  We see a lot of God’s anger in these writings and it can be confusing to not only unpack the original message, but what we’re supposed to get out of it today.

 [Brief historical context] The prophet Isaiah is believed to be a contemporary of the two prophets Amos and Hosea that we have talked about the last several weeks.  We are still in the midst of a time with the kingdom of Israel is divided and the people are living wildly.  One of the differences with Isaiah is that he is actually prophesying to the Southern Kingdom of what was referred to as Judah, while Amos and Hosea were speaking to the Northern kingdom….

In this first chapter, the Lord begins speaking through Isaiah by addressing some of their detestable acts.  The Lord rejects the ways their attempts to cleanse themselves of their sin and guilt, and then commands them to focus their efforts elsewhere.

Diving into the text] Let’s take a look at the text now… starting with verse ten.     ^“Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah!”     Now, I know those places may sound familiar to you because these were not just cities that people through around lightly back then.  Contrary to popular assumptions, the particular wickedness of these two cities was not just a matter of sexual misconduct.  It was just as much about the people’s greed and injustice.  This would have been a huge slap in the face to start your prophesy by comparing Judah to these two cities…

  And then the Lord begins to explain in verse eleven, “The multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me?” says the Lord.  “I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats…”

Now, you may be thinking, “What the heck does that have to do with anything?”

 [Historical Background]  Well, hundreds of years before this time period, the Lord gave Moses the Ten Commandments and a whole lot of other laws that the Israelites had to obey.  Obviously, the Israelites were just as unable to keep the whole Law as we are today.  So God, set up a system of additional laws for them to follow to cleanse themselves from their sinful disobedience.  You may be thinking, “Hmm, that seems funny for God to create laws for forgiveness…….if their inability to keep the law was what got them in this predicament in the first place.”  Well, I’m sure God probably has a good reason for it.  But it is these burnt offerings that the Lord is referring to that brought the people forgiveness.  The people were only doing what God had commanded them to do in order to be cleansed… 

“But if that’s what the Lord commanded them to, then why so much anger all of a sudden?  Why did God just got tired of it and suddenly decide to change the system?”   As people continued to “be fruitful and multiply,” perhaps God knew that sooner or later they’d run out of goats and bulls to sacrifice.     

The truth is, God can’t stand it when we live double lives!      Sure the Israelites were faithful with their worship, but their lifestyles were completely disobedient.  There was a huge disconnect between what happened inside the sanctuary…and what happened outside of it.     

And, if we take a closer look, it turns out that the people were trying to compensate for their behaviors by just bringing more sacrifices.  Look again at verse 11. “The multitude of your sacrifices, what are they to me?!?!”   They were either trying to be super-spiritual by sacrificing more… “Ooo look at me sacrificing even more than I’m supposed to,” or they were trying to outsmart God.  But God cannot be mocked.  The Lord can’t stand it when we live double lives. 

 [Testimony]  Duplicity was the story of most of my adolescence.      Like many of us, I grew up in the church.  I heard all the Sunday school messages and was involved in our youth group.  I attended YoungLife regularly and went on countless retreats.  I knew all about Jesus and called myself a Christian.  The only problem was…my life outside of those “sanctuaries” looked nothing like Jesus.  For five or six years I lived a double-life and somehow managed to block-out the hypocrisy.  It wasn’t until college that the music stopped…and through a series of unfulfilling experiences, I was brought low.  I was forced to look at myself in the mirror for who I really was.  I realized that, although I had said I believed in Jesus, I had never really surrendered my life to him.  I was still driving and forcing him to ride shotgun.  Such duplicity left me empty.  And just like the Israelites, it obviously didn’t please the Lord either.

I can imagine if God had spoken to me during that time, it would have sounded like it did for the Israelites here in verse 13.  “Stop bringing meaningless offerings!”      Worship was supposed to be real and genuine!  It was supposed to be a posture when their hearts were made low before the Lord and they humbly confessed their sins.  And God’s forgiveness would then lead them to live lives that are different as a result!  The Israelites weren’t actually sorry for their actions.  They wanted life on their own terms, even if it meant living a double-life…  

 [HERE AND NOW]  Sometimes I wonder if I’m actually still living a double-life…    What about you?      You see, the more I read about the Israelites, the more we identify with them.  A few weeks ago, we talked about how we all run around on the Lord.  And I think if we’re honest, most of us are guilty of living this sort of double-life too.  We know how we’re supposed to be living, but we just kind of do whatever it is when want for the most part.  And the worst part is, we tend to become numb to it over time.  We somehow manage to block out our hypocrisy and just move on with our day and our lives…  

v     Jesus commanded us to “love one another…”  And yet our thoughts are more like, “I spend lots of time loving and serving others so it’s no big deal that I really don’t like so-and-so.”

v     Or maybe you actually don’t have time to serve others.  I’d actually love to see how that dialogue with the Lord would go… “Yeah, God, I just got too much on my plate right now…to put food on someone elses.”

v     When it comes to our finances, Jesus told us to, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s… and give to the Lord what is the Lord’s.”  And for us, it’s often, “Yeah, I know I’m supposed to be honest with my taxes, it’s just this one line item…. Besides, God doesn’t really care about the IRS (no offense Jeff J ).  And I know I’m supposed to give back 10% to the Lord, but God doesn’t expect that during a recession when the times are tough and my income has tanked.”   

v     We’re supposed to, “Trust in the Lord and lean not on our own understanding…”  Instead, it’s more like, “Lord, I know you’re leading me to step out in faith and do something with my life…or my time left here on earth… but stepping out into the unknown is just too risky…I might just hold off a little bit and wait for things to look a little more secure before I do.”

v     We’re quick to lift our voices in praise to the Lord here in the sanctuary……. But to talk to a loved one…or a friend…or a complete stranger about Jesus, that’s a little uncomfortable. 

We call ourselves “Christians”……but the words that come out of our mouths, our sinful habits and our selfish motives—none of it actually looks like…Christ.  We’re all guilty of living a double-life……and the Lord hates it!

“Stop doing wrong…learn to do right!  Seek justice, encourage the oppressed.  Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case for the widow.” 

    That’s what we’re supposed to do!  We need to wake up and see our hypocrisy for what it is.  We need to channel those behaviors towards what is right!  “Seek justice! Encourage the oppressed!”   Why aren’t the individuals at the Druid Hills homeless shelter at the top of our priority list?  “How can we pretend to worship a homeless man on Sundays and ignore one on Monday?”    How can we pretend that there are hundreds of children in this city with out father-figures?!?!  How do we manage to block-out that our city is ranked in the top-ten worldwide for child prostitution and human trafficking!?!?  It doesn’t matter how old we are, whether we’re white, black, red, green, poor or rich….    It’s time to worship the Lord with our lives outside of this sanctuary. 

And let me also be quick to say that I have been very impressed this summer with a lot of individuals in this church who I’ve witnessed serve others so well.  It has been very encouraging.  I would encourage you to press-on even further, or at least help others find ways to get involved as well…     Not knowing where to begin is not an acceptable excuse for just doing nothing.  The internet has made it easier than ever to find ways to serve others in this city, and this church has connections with more non-profits than you have time to give, so we’re all without excuse.   

I hope that my double-life begins to hit me in the face more often…because I need it!  And honestly, I hope the same thing for each of you.      Maybe…. just maybe, coming to terms with our hypocrisy will produce enough frustration to actually lead us to go and “learn to do what is right…“ 

            When our double-life comes to an end…then our worship is genuine.  When we die to ourselves, then we are rightly positioned to receive this prophetic word… which points to our savior’s redeeming work on the cross…

“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;     

though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”

 Let’s stop living  double-lives and let’s get out the door and really worship the Lord by serving others.

Jill Tolbert

Luke 12:13-21
Hosea 11:1-11

One of my favorite authors is Anne Lamott, who, according to her agent, “writes about subjects that begin with capital letters: Alcoholism, Motherhood, Jesus.”

She is sharp and witty–insightful and real. If you’ve never read anything by her, check her out. She’s good.

At any rate, I just recently read her latest novel, “Imperfect Birds.”

It is a tale that is both a heartbreaking and delightful–a reminder that, for a great many of us, no matter how difficult the struggle between parent and child is, “love underlies it all.”

__________

Also, just this week, I finished reading the bestselling novel, “The Girls With the Dragon Tattoo,” by the late Stieg Larsson. Now if you’ve not heard of this book, it is the first in a trilogy, and is a current reading trend among adult fiction.

According to a recent review, this novel is an exceptional fusion of “the corporate corruption tale, (the) legal thriller and (the) dysfunctional-family psychological suspense story.” So many of my trusted friends had read it and loved it, so I picked it as my beach read recently.

__________

Both books are good. And they have little in common, they do both rely very heavily on the parent / child relationship to tell their stories.

Lamott’s main characters are a mother and daughter whose relationship is like many mother-daughter relationships—at its best, mutually loving and supportive. Sure, there were the teen, angst-driven, one-sided, and occasional two-sided, screaming matches sprinkled here and there–but for the most part, Lamott gives us a picture of a good, healthy parent-child relationship.
__________

Larsson’s story, on the other hand, reminds us that sometimes the relationship of parent and child can be extremely dark and scary. I don’t want to give too much away in case you plan to read the book or see the upcoming movie soon, but if there is still anyone out there who thinks that all parents are generally loving and supportive, this plot will shatter that illusion with almost every turn of the page.
__________

I share these books with you this morning as a caveat. It’s with wide-open awareness that we should read today’s text. It is not a text that can ignore or gloss over the metaphor of God as a loving parent. It’s right there, front and center, in all eleven verses.

But as we read it today, let’s do so with the agreement that equating God’s love for us with a parent’s love for a child simply, and sadly, does not always work. And for some people, it never works.

And let’s add a twofold prayer:
of thanks–for those who, despite not knowing the love of an earthly parent, have found the love of God,
and of hope–for those who do not know God’s love as such, that they may one day find it.

With that caveat in mind, today’s Old Testament Reading is from the book Hosea, 11: 1-11
The Old Testament Reading

1God’s Compassion Despite Israel’s Ingratitude
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
2 The more I* called them, the more they went from me; *
they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.
__________
3 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my* arms;
but they did not know that I healed them.
4 I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love.
I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks.* I bent down to them and fed them.
__________
5 They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king,
because they have refused to return to me.
6 The sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests,
and devours because of their schemes.
7 My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call,
but he does not raise them up at all.*
__________

8 How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?
How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
__________

My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.
__________

9 I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim;
for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.*
__________

10 They shall go after the Lord, who roars like a lion; when he roars,
his children shall come trembling from the west.
11 They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria;
and I will return them to their homes, says the Lord.

This is the W/word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

Marshmallows,…

When I was about two years old–maybe even less—my mama would leave me with Rosa (our maid / housekeeper / nanny) while she went grocery shopping. I did not like for my Mama to leave me. At all.

So as a “distraction,” these two wise women, my Mama and my Rosa, would set me up on our kitchen counter with a small, metal quarter-cup measure that we had, filled with miniature marshmallows.

And as my mama snuck out the door for her errands, I would quit crying long enough to enjoy their tiny, fluffy, heavenly goodness.

I can still recall the saltiness of the marshmallows as lingering tears found their way into my toddler mouth along with the tiny puffs of pure sugar.

Those marshmallows were my promise that, although my mama was leaving to go to the store, she still loved me and was still taking care of me, even though I couldn’t see her.

“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called him…” God reminds us here in Hosea.

Just as our parents taught us to walk, carried us from here to there, nursed us when we were sick, and fed us when we were hungry, so God tended Israel in her early childhood. In fact, a great case can be made that Israel’s life with God is much like the developmental life of a child from birth to adulthood…and its still a work in progress with us today!

Her earliest days, the days of Abram and Sarai, were a bit like a toddler in the early years. “Do it by self!!” they proclaimed on more than one occasion, attempting to take matters into their own hands. “No, she’s not my wife, she’s my sister!” and “I’ve not had children yet, and God promised a child, so here…take Hagar.”

But though it took time, Abraham eventually passed even the ultimate test—his willingness to sacrifice his only son Isaac because that’s what God told him to do. Isaac lived, and God’s promise to make a Great Nation was fulfilled.

God loved Abraham’s descendents and sent Moses to lead them out of bondage and towards the Promised Land.

“But the more I called them, the more they went from me…Yet I taught them to walk…I took them in my arms…I healed them…I led them and fed them.”

From golden calves in the wilderness, to their demand for a king, Israel continued to place their faith in things OTHER THAN God.

Yet despite their constant whining and stubbornness in their early years, God’s love and faithfulness prevailed, and they grew up….well, sort of.

Just like my mama’s marshmallows were her assurance that she loved me and cared for me even when I couldn’t see her, so God’s providence in the wilderness—in manna from heaven and water from rocks—were signs that God was with them, loving and caring for them, even when it seemed God might have left them.

Mittens,…

Leading up to Hosea’s writing to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, they had enjoyed both political stability and economic prosperity for over 100 years.

But they had begun to stray—to act a little bit bigger than there were. And the Assyrians began moving in. In the midst of this national crisis, Hosea prophesies to them, telling them about God’s anger with what they had become.

Their corrupt political and religious institutions had become a disgrace in God’s sight. They had lost their compass, their guide, their sense of right and wrong.

They had lost their way again.

Through the voice of Hosea, God is trying to remind them of their call to not only BE the people of God, but to ACT LIKE them…to ACT LIKE it makes a difference in the way they live their lives.

They are a people who have been SET APART by God, chosen—and yet they are once again bowing to the gods of culture and the lure of worldly power. And God is not pleased.

“Young man, you broke curfew and violated our trust. This is going to hurt me as much as it hurts you, but give me your cell phone and your car keys.”

Like a teenager who’s been robbed of his freedom because he abused it, Israel was headed again for the wilderness.

They have abused their freedom, and been irresponsible. They have lost their sense of morals and need to find the right way again. And oftentimes the wilderness is the best place to find that right way.

To quote poet Robert Brault, “Sometimes, in a moral struggle, we discover the right thing to do – just as, on some cold day long ago, we discovered mittens pinned to our coat sleeve.”

God is again sending them out into the wilderness—to re-group, re-member—to re-mind them again just Whose they are.

It’s cold and hard out there…but the mittens are there. They are there as God’s reminder that even though this is a hard thing to do, God is still present. Even though we may rant and rave and curse at God, God still loves us enough to correct us when we go astray and provide for us when we least expect it.

Mittens on our coat sleeve, like manna in the wilderness. In the same way that only a parent can, God often knows what we need before we actually need it, and it is right there in front of us when we least expect it. In the Wilderness, in the days of Hosea, and even today.

…and Bikes

One of the hardest parts of raising a child is teaching him or her to ride a bike. Our oldest son, Adam, started kindergarten riding his bike-with-training-wheels to school, and by the end of the school year, he was flying fast on two wheels.

But it was a slow process, balancing the need for speed with the need for support—first from the training wheels as we inched them higher and higher, then from a gentle hand on the back of the bike seat once the training wheels were removed.

Then, as he rode away from us on his own, calling back “You’ve still got me, right Mom? You’re still there Dad, aren’t you?”

“Yes son—we’ve still got you. We’re still here…” And he was off!

A shaky child learning to ride a bicycle needs both support and freedom. So we, too, need both support and freedom from God. And in God’s wisdom and providence, both are freely given to us.

Though you are bent on turning away from me, God says, “I will not destroy you…because I am OTHER THAN you. I am NOT mortal, and will not come in wrath. Instead, I will be WITH you, whether you think you need me or not.

I will be there, roaring like a lion—reminding you of Who I Am and Whose You Are.

And when I roar, you will hear me. And you will come home to me, no matter how far you have strayed. And I will welcome you. I will take you up in my arms and tend to your wounds. I will lift you to my cheek and feed you.

I began with a reference to books, and so I will close that way as well.

One that was given to us as new parents was “Love You Forever,” by Robert Munsch. It’s the story of how a little boy “goes through the stages of childhood and becomes a man. It is also about the enduring nature of parents’ love and how it crosses generations.”

We read it over and over and over again. The boys liked it, but I have to admit that I read it mostly for myself.

The book walks through the more difficult stages of a child’s life page by page, with the Mom going to great lengths to tuck her child into bed each night as he grows older.

And each page turn echoes the familiar chorus: “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always. As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.” The book ends with the son becoming a parent of his own daughter, and tucking her in with the same chorus.

No matter what YOU do, *I* will be there, roaring like a lion—reminding you of Who I Am and Whose You Are.

And when I roar, you will hear me. And you will come home to me, no matter how far you have strayed. And I will welcome you. I will take you up in my arms and tend to your wounds. I will lift you to my cheek and feed you.

So it should be with parenting. So it IS with God.
__________

Friends, the Living God whom we worship is the same God that made good on the promise to Abraham and Sarah.
It is the same God who brought the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.
who speaks to us through Hosea, telling us of extreme frustration and anger, but also of utter love and faithfulness.
who we have turned our back on as stubborn toddlers, wanting to “Do it by self!” for centuries—millennia, even.
And yet God says to us each and every moment of each and every day, “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always. As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.”

Evan Carter

Luke 11:1-13
Hosea 1:2-10

After hearing this reading, you’re probably thinking the same thing I thought last week…. So this is why Marthame is out this week.    Well done Marthame, well done.   Actually, the reality is, we’ve been reading difficult texts like this all summer long.

[RECAP] For those of you who haven’t been with us, this summer we’ve been pouring through a series on various prophets in the Bible, and a lot of them have some pretty strange things to say.

These are the texts you don’t exactly want to play Bible roulette with — you know, those times in life when you want the Lord to give you a sweet message for whatever you’re dealing with…so you sit down with your Bible and you open it up randomly. But you land on stories about Elijah or Amos or Hosea and God is promising wrath and destruction upon his people.  These prophecies can be tough to reconcile with our notions of a loving, compassionate God.

[BRIEF HISTORY] – The book of Hosea is pretty strange in it’s own unique way too.  According to scholars, Hosea immediately followed the prophet Amos.  Amos’ words of wrath and destruction had little impact on the Israelite people’s behaviors.  They continued to live wildly and participated in all kinds of idol worship.  So, just before the Assyrian conquest, God sent these words to Hosea to prophecy to the Northern Kingdom:

UNPACKING THE TEXT

“Hosea, go take for yourself an adulterous wife…   And even though she is going to run around and cheat on you, I want you to remain faithful to her.  Oh, and she’s going to have three children, which may or may not actually be of your seed.

I don’t know if any of you have ever heard the Lord speak to you. I personally have never heard an audible voice tell me anything…  But, I suppose if I ever did, and God told me what he told Hosea, I’m sure I’d act like I didn’t hear it anyway.    Did God really tell this guy to go and marry a woman he knew would be unfaithful to him?  That seems contradictory to the Old Testament moral code.  It’s stories like this that stop and make me think, if people were making all this stuff up in the Bible, don’t you think they would have left out something like this?

Regardless, what does this story have to do with you and me today?  And what does this story tell us about God, who is timeless?  Is God going to tell me to go and do something crazy like marry an unfaithful prostitute too?    Well, I hope not, seeing as I’m supposed to marry someone else, who is absolutely amazing, in three weeks.

As I read about the Israelite people in these stories, I see that… not much has changed… People were running around on God then, and we’re still running around on God now.  You see, if I can be so bold, we are all like Gomer.  We’re cheaters……who are unfaithful to the Lord too.    Though it’s not the most joyful message for a Sunday morning, it is the truth!  We are all guilty of the same adultery on a spiritual level.

What does it look like for us to be unfaithful in our relationship with the Lord? After all, it’s not like we’re worshipping other gods like the people we read about in the Bible!   But are we?  Maybe we don’t understand the concept of worship.  The reality is…we are all worshipping something…it’s just that it is often not the Lord.

“To be unfaithful to God is to worship or to love something or someone else more than our relationship with the Lord.”    To put God second, whether knowingly or unknowingly…that is unfaithfulness.

What does unfaithfulness look like directly between the Lord and me? It’s when I know the Lord is leading me to step out in faith and do something, yet I choose not to.  It’s the, “Lord, if you’ll get me out of this, I promise I will never get myself into a situation like this again.” He picks me up, and I fall right back down.

[Finances] Unfaithfulness is when I don’t make the time to sit down and look at my finances in order to make tithing a priority of my spiritual life….because then I will actually know how much the Lord has given me that I should give back in gratitude and in faith. “Lord, I’m not sure if anyone has filled you in, but we’re in a little bit of a recession right now and times are a little tough these days.”  A lot of people can give when the barns are full.

[Friends with Benefits] Unfaithfulness is when my prayer life consists of a list of demands and reminders for the Lord – without a response of thanks, praise, and obedience.  It’s when I treat God like a “Friend with benefits.”  I want the perks and the freedom without the responsibility. “I don’t have time to hang out today Lord, work is really busy right now and I need to make some things happen, I got some errands to run.”  You know what that is?  That says, I’ll make time for you when I need you Lord…like when life starts falling apart.  When my career is in jeopardy, someone I love gets sick, or my finances are not as secure as I thought they were…then I’ll be interested in talking to you Lord – when I remember that I feel my need for you.

[Other people] – Not only is unfaithfulness directly between us and the Lord, it can also involve our relationships with other people too.  Unfaithfulness is when I chose to ignore what Jesus referred to as the second greatest commandment…to “love my neighbor as myself.”  Yeah I know I’m supposed to love everyone but I just can’t love “so-and-so.”  Lord, you made him and….and you knit him together in his mother’s womb remember?  So you know how they are.  I just can’t love them right now.”

And lastly, I think unfaithfulness can also manifest itself in the way we interact or worship what the world offers us.  Unfaithfulness is when I’m not content with what I have, so I lust or covet what another has.  When I compare my body image to anothers’….When I worship success or popularity or money or….myself.  It’s when I allow my thoughts to be consumed with worry and anxiety constantly, doubting if the Lord can really be trusted.  This is all unfaithfulness too.

We are guilty of unfaithfulness.  And Oglethorpe, this will only hurt us as a body and as individuals.  Love is not contingent upon whether someone is deserving of it.  Love is not optional.  Yet, it is the only way.

So, why do we do it?  Are we just selfish with our time and selfish with our love?  No, the problem is deeper.  These are mere symptoms.  It’s not a coincidence that we all just happen to randomly struggle with these things like selfishness, greed, judgment, envy, lust…or our inability to love people.  The problem is…I have the same DNA as Gomer….and so do you!  It’s called sin, and we all got the virus.

[McKittrick] I asked a friend this week what he thought unfaithfulness with the Lord looks like in his life.  He simply replied, “It looks like what I see when I wake up and look in the mirror.”

How’s your faithfulness?   Are you able to see the Gomer inside of you?  Where are you unfaithful?  Where do you need to drop to your knees and repent of your adultery?

And yet… even as we all continue to run around on the Lord, placing everything and everyone in front of God….there is good news!  You see, adultery is not the point of the story of the life of Hosea and Gomer.  So what, a guy married a prostitute who cheated on him, big deal!?!   It’s not a story about unfaithfulness…….it’s about faithfulness!  God alone is faithful!  God is faithful, loving and pursuing even when we are not.  These words of prophecy in Hosea are part of the plan the Lord had all along.  God commands Hosea to do these things and speaks against the people for all their adultery… and then in verse ten, we get a glimpse of what it’s all about.

“Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’

The Israelites needed to understand that they could not be faithful to the Lord on their own… and that they needed a savior!  And the same is true for us today!  God’s faithfulness culminates in the way of sending us a messiah to save us from our adultery.  Jesus, the Christ, entered into our world and died the death that we deserved, so that we could be restored into a right relationship with God.  That’s faithfulness!

[“Faithfulness” story about Julia and I] – Julia and I were coming back from a family vacation at the beach a few weeks ago and we were talking a lot about how helpful some of our pre-marital counseling has been.  At one point in the conversation, I felt compelled to make a pseudo-confession.  In the midst of some of the intense self-discovery that pre-marital counseling tends to push people towards, I explained to her that I suddenly realized that, if I were not careful, I was actually capable of making some of the same adulterous mistakes that tore my family apart during my childhood.  If I didn’t have a healthy awareness and fear of my sin, I too could be an adulterer.  And I’ll never forget what she said back to me.  I expected to hear words filled with fear and emotion.  Instead, she softly replied, “I’d like to think that even if you were to make a mistake and hurt me like that…it would still be “till death do us part.”

Whew! That’s faithfulness….and that’s only a glimpse of the Lord’s faithfulness.   The challenge for all of us is to learn to accept the Lord’s unmerited love and grace.  To the extent that we are able to do that, to be able to really accept and understand such unmerited love and grace; the more we will be able to grow in faithfulness with the Lord and with others.

FOCUS: I think this text is trying to say that….

God is faithful even when we are not.

FUNCTION: I think this text is encouraging us to….

Think about where you’ve been cheating on the Lord and make serious efforts to repent from those things.

“If we are faithless, God will remain faithful, for God cannot disown himself.”  ~ 2 Timothy 2:13

Marthame Sanders (Marthame’s sermons and other reflections are also available on his blog)

Luke 10:38-42
Amos 8:1-12

You know, this whole prophet sermon series seemed like a good idea at the time. When Elijah and Elisha are healing people or raising the dead or feeding widows or taking on Ahab and Jezebel, that was OK. Things seem to have turned the corner here with Amos today. Suddenly this beautiful bowl of fruit somehow becomes a metaphor for utter destruction. And that destruction isn’t contained to just a select few; instead, the whole community is going to suffer.

Which is why it’s such a good thing that we have two texts to read every Sunday! I don’t know about you, but I think I need a running start at Amos. So let’s jump back to Luke for a minute.

Here we find this familiar story of the debate between Martha and Mary about who is doing the right thing. Jesus arrives at Martha’s home with the disciples. And from what we know about the culture at the time, what Martha does is what is to be expected of a female host. She gets back into the kitchen and begins fixing food and refreshment for all of her guests. But her sister Mary, rather than joining her in service, plants herself at Jesus’ feet, where she begins to soak it all in.

This story has become so familiar to some of us that we use it as a sort of personality type identifier. How many of you would identify yourselves as Marthas? How many of you constantly make yourself busy, and look to serve God by running around and making sure that everyone else is OK? And how many of you would identify yourselves as Marys? How many of you are content to sit in the presence of God and just soak in the wisdom and faith? How many of you raised your hands twice or not at all?

Personally, I tend to be more Martha than Mary; it’s even there in my name, “Martha – Me”. But no matter where you are on this sibling spectrum, it’s my hunch that a lot of us probably took Martha’s side in the argument. Of course Mary should be helping! It’s not fair that she gets to hang out with the disciples while Martha is busting her rear in the kitchen. In fact, if Martha weren’t doing what she’s doing, then she would be criticized for being a bad host.

But let’s take a closer look. Is there something going on that we first miss when we glance at the scene? Let’s start with the obvious: it’s Martha’s house, not Mary’s. So in that cultural context, it really is Martha’s duty (and not Mary’s) to provide for the guests. OK; not particularly earth-shattering, but helpful. But then we realize that Martha doesn’t take her complaint directly to Mary, but goes to Jesus instead. How does that work out for her? Have you ever gone to someone to complain about somebody else? And if that third party is particularly grounded, how does that work out for you? “Mom, Alecia took my crayons.” “Then go work it out with her.” I don’t think Jesus is likely to get triangled by gossip.

Then we notice that Martha is doing what is expected as far as being a woman in the time of Jesus. Mary, on the other hand, had planted herself as a disciple. In essence, she was not doing what a woman was supposed to do, but instead doing what a man would do. And rather than dismissing Martha’s complaint, instead, Jesus is subtly questioning the whole cultural paradigm here. He scandalously applauds the woman who sits at his feet, the one who has violated the cultural norms.

Finally, Jesus doesn’t say that Mary is right and Martha is wrong. It’s never that easy. Instead, he observes that Mary has chosen the better option. This isn’t an endorsement of contemplative life over the life of service. Jesus is simply saying that contemplation, too, has its place in the life blood of faith.

Or to put it another way: contemplation without service drifts toward narcissism. And service without contemplation becomes self-inflicted martyrdom.

Remember where this story comes, after all. Luke’s whole gospel is set in motion by Mary, the mother of Jesus, as she sings to God, “My soul magnifies the Lord…for the Lord has lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry and brought down the powerful and sent the rich away.” Jesus picks up on this in his first public preaching in Nazareth in Luke’s account, reading from the scroll in Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, sight to the blind, release to the captives.” And this particular story follows right after Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, answering the lawyer’s question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life.” It’s the epitome of the go and do lesson, not the go and sit lesson. Luke gospel’s is, first and foremost, testimony to a God who does stuff. It is witness to a God who upsets the way things are “supposed” to be.

Which is as good a place as any to get back to Amos. As much as we might not like to look at what Amos has to say to us today because it’s such a downer, the reality is that Amos is the very essence of the Hebrew prophet. The prophetic tradition of Christianity, the very strand of our teaching that is called “social justice”, is found right here in the poundings of the Old Testament prophets, It is a call that echoes through the gospels and even up through today. It is a call that says quite simply: “The life of faith cannot consist of pure ritual. It must be embodied, enfleshed, lived out in our very selves!”

The time in which Amos is preaching is an era of unprecedented security and prosperity for the northern kingdom of Israel. Their territory has expanded to its farthest boundaries. And there is this pervading sense throughout the nation that this bounty and safety are rewards from God for the people’s faithful devotion to the sacrifices and their dedicated upkeep of the altars and shrines.

But Amos, the one who’s very name means “burden,” is weighed down by what is swept under the rug. His vision is troubled by what God sees beneath the surface. The poor are being abused. The merchants are honoring the Sabbath, but they really can’t wait until the sun goes down so that they can get back to the daily work of fleecing those who can least afford it. The fury of the God’s prophet is unleashed on those who would value a pair of shoes more than a human being who bears God’s own imprint. Amos’ judgment is a reminder not only of the call of faith to go and do, but also the attention that God gives to those on the margins, those whom it would be easy to ignore, because they have no place, no voice, no one to speak for them. It is into this vacuum that the prophet steps to say, “You have been warned.”

What is curious is that this prophetic call to righteousness seems to be a constant, no matter what circumstances in which the particular prophet lives. When the nation is thriving and the people feel secure, they ignore the poor because they feel they’ve earned that right. When the nation is threatened, either by foreign powers or natural disasters, and the people are terrified, they ignore the poor because they’re convinced there’s not enough to go around. And when the nation is utterly destroyed and taken into exile and the people feel abandoned by God, they ignore the poor because, really, what’s the point? The nation’s circumstances are secondary to the fact that the people habitually ignore the poor. And they do so at risk to their own well-being.

And this is where Amos gets downright haunting. There is this prophecy of famine; not one of literal hunger, where the storm clouds are shut up and rain ceases to fall, no. Instead, it seems there will continue to be plenty of bowls of summer fruit. But the people will suddenly recognize that the word of God is absent. Unlike the poor whom they have utterly ignored, the people will eat their fill. But they will remain utterly empty and desolate. “They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.” God is gone. You’re on your own.

And perhaps it is here that we can join Mary and Martha in their debate about which sister is more righteous. Martha is making sure that everyone has enough to eat, that there is plenty to go around. We have no indication that she is ignoring the poor and needy; instead, we might even assume that she has been sure to see to their needs. But maybe the truth is that she herself is empty. As in the time of Amos, when greed and gain were so much the norm such that it took a wandering shepherd prophet to point out the hypocrisy, the broader culture at the time of Jesus has contributed to Martha’s spiritual hunger. As a woman, her place is in the kitchen, seeing to the needs of everyone else, well out of earshot of the words that would feed her soul. Mary, on the other hand, is being filled. Mary has, intentionally or not, pushed the envelope of acceptability. She has demanded her rightful place in the presence of Jesus; and Jesus has made it clear to all who listen that this woman deserves to be right where she is, up front and center.

Eventually, Mary will have to get up from the floor. And if she has really taken the words of Jesus to heart, she, too, will be compelled by this desire to feed the world with what it really hungers for. And that, ultimately, is the call that Christ offers us. It is one thing to make ourselves busy with the tasks of the world, like Martha. It is another thing to take in everything that the world has to offer, like Mary. And it is another thing altogether to see that the two are intimately connected. We go and sit so that we can go and do. Contemplation is nothing if it is not lived out. And we go and do fully aware that we must make time to go and sit at Jesus’ feet again and again and again. Service is nothing if it has no life blood to feed it. It is like cut flowers; they look pretty for a while, but cut off from their roots, they will wither and die.

So what about you? Where are you compelled in all of this? Are you a habitual Martha? Then Jesus is calling to you. What would it look like to walk out of the kitchen and sit on the floor for a while? What are you going to do when everyone complains that the guests are here and they are hungry? Can you recognize that you can’t feed anyone if you yourself haven’t been fed?

Or are you a Mary? Do you find yourself constantly soaking it in? Do you bathe in the beauty of the word of God? Perhaps you have taken in the better part; but be careful of your own spiritual gluttony. Then the prophet is calling to you. It’s time to push back from the table, to give your seat to another, to let others know that you have tasted and it is, indeed, good! Come, and eat your fill!

Let us all hear the word of the Lord: go and sit; go and do; go and love. Amen.

(the service didn’t get recorded this week. sorry. But here’s a bonus special message from Marthame)

Marthame Sanders (Marthame’s sermons and other reflections are also available on his blog)

Luke 10:25-37
Amos 7:7-17

How do we measure up?

When we first moved into our house, the master bathroom had no shower. But there was a closet on the other side of the wall, and so we knocked a hole (well, not we – we did hire a contractor), sealed off the closet, and turned it into the shower. Great job. The trick came when we went to put in the shower curtain, working to get it even so that the water wouldn’t sneak out over the lip.

I eyeballed it, and squared it off against the new “doorway” into the shower, and it looked good. I then stepped back into our bedroom, and the shower rod seemed to be at about a 30 degree angle. But then again, our house was built in 1955, and has been “settling” ever since. It apparently was settling at the rate of 2 degrees a year. So we got out the level, made sure the bubble was in the middle, and our new shower curtain was, indeed, level.

How do we measure up? It’s one thing to compare ourselves relative to others, whether that be positively so or negatively so. But it’s another thing altogether to have the spiritual equivalent of a level to keep us steady.

This morning we pick up the story of Amos. I love the start of this story because it says, “God put a plumb line, and then said to Amos, ‘What is this?’ Amos said, ‘It’s a plumb line.’” Thank you, Captain Obvious.

Outside of the book of Amos, little is known about him at all. His name means, “Burden” and he seems to inhabit this Debbie Downer persona. He was active at a time of relative prosperity and security, but, as the conscience of the nation, he was deeply distressed by the fact that the poor were being ignored. And this plumb line is as good a metaphor as any for God’s judgment.

The plumb line was, and is, a simple instrument used in construction. It’s a string with a weight tied to the end of it, using gravity to make a straight vertical line. The symbolism of such an image as God dangles the line before Amos is clear, that Israel must measure up to this straight line – it must build its walls of faith to these exacting standards. It must keep the covenants and commandments of the law and the promise. But it has already failed to do so, not many years after the triumphant reign of King David, and must suffer the consequences. It is Amos’ lucky job, as the prophet, to inform the king of God’s decision: that the people of Israel don’t measure up. It’s not a message that King Jeroboam wants to hear, but nor is it a message that Amos seems all that eager to deliver. He is quick to point out that the word is not his, that he’s not the regally-fed and housed prophet that Amaziah, Jeroboam’s mouthpiece, comes to represent. Instead, Amos reminds Jeroboam that the word he speaks comes from the mouth of God – it is God who holds the plumb line between a divine forefinger and thumb, not Amos. And it is Jeroboam who has led the people to build this faithless, leaning wall that appears to be crumbling.

You see, there is a burden that comes with power, particularly that of those who have been trusted with the fates of peoples and nations.

Our own tradition bears witness to this idea – John Calvin, the French Reformer living in his own diaspora in Switzerland, included a preface to the King of France in every edition of his exhaustive Institutes of the Christian Religion. And each time he begged the King to repent of his repressive, faithless, leaning-wall ways. With power, he argued, comes responsibility. And with great power comes even greater responsibility – for a when a king or a queen, a prince or a princess falls, they take an entire people with them.

But we’re not just talking about royal figures or governments or militaries or even corporations here – but we’re not not talking about them, either. We, too, standing before that simple measuring device, before that plumb line of Amos’ vision, will fall just like princes. And our falls will have consequences not just for ourselves, but for others. Our imperfectly-constructed walls will crumble like sand, for no one can stand righteous before God. No one can claim perfection. No one can present themselves as flawless. None of our constructed walls will pass inspection.

For many years, we have used the story of the Good Samaritan to correct our flaws, to use as our measuring stick, our plumb line. We have read this story for years, but it is always surprising to read it again and find how many details we’ve invented. It’s a short story, a mere paragraph, but our imaginations – perhaps from Sunday School re-enactments as a child – add all sorts of things that aren’t really there – the bandits hiding behind rocks, or that man lying in a ditch at the side of the road, the priest and Levite saying something smug and dismissive to the man. None of this information is there, but in our minds, to varying degrees, it is every bit a part of the story.

This is why it bears repeated readings – not only to flesh out the details of the story, to figure out what is Scripture and what fancy, but also to see if we are really reading the story as it was really told and whether we are learning from it what was originally being taught.

This story for us has always been a morality tale, about that poor, innocent man headed down that steep, desert slope from Jerusalem towards Jericho, and the despised Samaritan – the one who might’ve been a neighbor of those lepers in Burqin – who proves more faithful than the religiously-precocious priest and Levite. I remember very vividly those early Sunday School lessons that taught my classmates and me this cautionary tale about judging people by the color of their skin, or the amount of money in their pockets, or any other humanly-instituted dividing wall (like whether they are Samaritan or Jew or Arab). And over the years, for most of us, the Good Samaritan has come to represent our drive to be moral, our faithful living in the kingdom’s shadow. Churches have their Good Samaritan funds, as means to help those in desperate circumstances. Some cities and states in the US have now enacted Good Samaritan laws that oblige people to help those in distress or under physical threat – kind of a compelled compassion, we could call it. The good, saintly, kind Samaritan has become our plumb line, where we take our cue from his honorable actions and from Jesus’ command to “go and do likewise,” to help others. This has been the way we can measure up.

But there’s one crucial detail missing in this version – or rather, this interpretation of the story. The story is told because a young lawyer asks Jesus a question: “Who is my neighbor?” The answer to this question is the story, but at the end of the story it is Jesus who does the asking: “Who,” he asks the neighbor, “proved to be the neighbor?” Jesus does something amazing and subtle in the telling of the story – he flips the question on its head. Notice the use of the word neighbor in the two questions. The lawyer wants to know who is his neighbor. His neighbor turns out to be the one who – in the lawyer’s own words – “showed him mercy.” Here’s the turn: at the end of the story, by the time we have come to respect this Samaritan, this outcast who lends a helping hand, Jesus in essence says to the lawyer, “You came seeking your neighbor. The Samaritan is your neighbor.

Which means that you’re the one in the road. You want to know who your neighbor is? He’s the one who comes to you, salves your wounds with oil, and feeds your hunger with wine. You are not the one in a position to help. You are the one in need of help, whether you know it or not. You’re not the one with the power to change your circumstance – you are the powerless one, relying on the goodness of a stranger and outcast. You were left in the road, all but dead – but I’m telling you that today, you are alive!”

Friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ, we are the lawyer – we are the ones who lie in the road, whether by circumstance, or of our own doing. And it is Jesus Christ, the outcast among outcasts, who comes to us, picks us up, salves us with the waters of baptism and feeds us with the bread and wine of the Eucharist. We cannot measure up, friends – that’s the good news! But even so, Christ has called us by name, has gathered us here, and has bound us together. That plumb line, dropped in our midst, is the very cross of Christ. And so it becomes a way not to strangle us with our failures, but it becomes the way by which we cling to God, by which God holds us in grace. We have been pulled from the road, called from our olive orchards, our sycamore trees, our sheep, and have been bathed and nourished in the grace of Christ. We must see ourselves not as powerful, but as powerless before the perfect holiness of God. And when we do, we will see that we have not been left for dead in the road, ignored by the respectable, but we have been given a whole new life by the one who came for the outcasts – and thereby became an outcast himself. We must, we must go and do likewise, as Jesus tells the lawyer, because it has been done for us already.

It is for this reason that we must stand before the thrones of the powerful and speak the truth of Amos. It is for this reason that we must stop along the road with the Samaritan and help the one who despises us. And when we do, we do it not in an effort to measure up, to build more effective walls, but rather to acknowledge that this plumb line has become our very lifeline.

Do we measure up? Not even close. Our walls begin to crumble before they are even built. But the good news is that God comes to us anyway, calling us, holding us, surrounding us, and shaping us to be instruments of divine grace. May we, and the whole world with us, go and do likewise. Amen.