Reclaiming the Neighborhood

What is hope all about? Is it sitting and wishing... or is it something else, as well? In this sermon, I suggest that hope is not only belief, but also action; and that God calls us to live out our hopes through the actions that we take. Do you agree with me?

How would you respond if you saw the following ad in the classifieds? "For sale: One field, suitable for growing wheat or barley. Family property. Convenient location. In need of some TLC. Currently in use as campground by invading army. Price negotiable. All offers considered." Would you respond to that ad? I confess that I probably wouldn’t. After all, why buy a field when an enemy army is occupying the territory? Life doesn’t go on as usual during a war, nor for a long time afterwards. Who would buy a field under those circumstances?

The answer is that Jeremiah would – and did. The scripture reading this morning tells us that Jeremiah’s cousin Hanamel came to him and asked him to buy a field just like that. It was family property; and it would be lost to them if someone outside the family gained control of it. The trouble was, that someone was the Babylonian army; and they were well on the way to controlling not only that field, but the whole country of Judah! Why in the world would Jeremiah buy a field in circumstances like that? To understand the answer, you need a little background.

The prophet Jeremiah had been a thorn in the side of Judah’s King Zedekiah for years. The king, his generals, and everybody else in Jerusalem thought that their city was invincible. After all, the Temple of the Lord stood there; and surely God wouldn’t let his Temple fall to an enemy army! But Jeremiah loudly and publically proclaimed otherwise. God wasn’t happy with the people’s behavior, he said. They relied more on their foreign allies than they did on God. And one of these days… one of these days… the chickens were going to come home to roost. God would give their nation up to one of the foreign nations that they relied on so much. Jerusalem would fall. And now, in today’s scripture reading (Jeremiah 32:1-2. 6-15), Jeremiah’s prophecy is coming true. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, has had enough of Judah’s attempt to play both ends against the middle; and he has sent his army to wipe out Jerusalem once and for all. As the story takes place, they are besieging the city. Crack troops are camped all around Jerusalem. No one can come into the city, and no one can go out. Although Jerusalem has a reliable internal water supply, their food is running low. At some point, the city will either surrender or become so weak that the Babylonian army will breach the walls with little resistance. Anybody with a grain of sense can see that; and Jeremiah says so. But the king insists on hanging on to the traditional belief that God will defend his city against all comers – Babylon included – and so, he throws Jeremiah in jail. He just doesn’t want to hear the truth.

So, I ask again… why would Jeremiah buy a field under circumstances like that? After all, Jeremiah was the ultimate realist. He knew that Babylon’s victory was certain. (And, in fact, they did conquer Jerusalem not long after this story takes place.) What in the world was Jeremiah thinking? Jeremiah was thinking that, no matter how hopeless the situation, there is always hope in God. Remember that God told him to buy the field from his cousin as a sign of hope in the future. After he bought the field and gave the deed to the scribe Baruch to record, Jeremiah proclaimed, “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says: ‘Houses, fields, and vineyards will again be bought in this land.’” Now, he never used the word “hope.” But hope is exactly what Jeremiah had. And it’s important to understand where Jeremiah put his hope. He didn’t have hope in the king’s ability to hold out against Babylon. He certainly didn’t have hope that Babylon might have compassion and spare Jerusalem! No, Jeremiah had hope in the god of his fathers who promised to bring his nation through warfare and exile back to their families and to their ancestral lands. Although the circumstances appeared to be hopeless, Jeremiah’s act proclaimed that in God, we always have hope. Despite the presence of the Babylonian army and the immanent destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah’s act began to reclaim the neighborhood for God’s people.

God calls us today, just as God called Jeremiah, to reclaim the neighborhoods in our lives. And there are a lot of neighborhoods that need to be reclaimed, aren’t there? Some are the burned-out, tumble-down, boarded-up neighborhoods of our inner cities. There’s precious little hope to be found there. Whole families exist on welfare for generations, because there are no jobs to be found there; and what work exists is low-wage and menial. You can’t support a family on that kind of job, much less get ahead.  Some are the affluent, upper-class neighborhoods of the suburbs. Does that surprise you? Think for a moment: where is the hope of most owners of sprawling McMansions with a golf course view? Why, it’s in the stock market… or in the family inheritance. Surely the recent economic disaster teach us that money is the worst place to put our hope! And some of the neighborhoods that we need to reclaim aren’t neighborhoods at all. They are groups of people – battered women, bullied students, homeless men who have given up on life. Hope? Not for them.

God calls us today, just as God called Jeremiah, to spread hope through our actions. The good news is that God is with us always, and that God will make a way through even the most difficult circumstances! And we are the ones who are called to take action against all those situations that drive hope out of the lives of millions of people. Now, we don’t have to find an abandoned property in the middle of west Dayton and renovate it. Sure, some Christians do that. But others reclaim the neighborhood by working for Habitat for Humanity… or speaking out against laws that restrict opportunity instead of expanding it… or maybe even intervening if they see someone being bullied. Hope, you know, begins small. But once it starts, it doesn’t stay that way for long.

On the way home from the east coast on one of our recent trips, Fred and I stopped by the Flight 93 memorial in western Pennsylvania. You will recognize it as the site where the third hijacked plane crashed on 9/11. The courageous actions of its passengers prevented that plane from destroying the Capitol building or possibly even the White House in Washington, D.C. on that terrible day. All of those passengers were killed in the crash. On the site is a long, white marble wall engraved with the names of the brave people on that plane who sacrificed their lives to prevent the success of terrorism. At the base of the wall lay items that visitors leave there – a rosary… a teddy bear… a single rose. One item caught my eye and my heart. It was a set of military dog tags. Why did a visitor choose to leave dog tags? Did it signify that the passengers on Flight 93 were as brave as any member of our military forces? Did it honor the sacrifice that civilian passengers on a commercial airline aren’t supposed to have to make? We’ll never know. But to me, it was a symbol of hope – hope that one day, we can give away all our dog tags. On that day, all of creation will be the neighborhood. On that day, we will care as much about people who are different than we are as we will about people who are the same. On that day, we won’t talk about “we” and “them,” but about “all of us.” On that day, God has promised that there will be no more hate, no more terrorism, no more war. On that day, all the money that we spend to build tanks and drones and missiles will be used to sustain life instead of to destroy it. On that day, there won’t be any more need for dog tags.

That is the hope that we are called to share. May its fulfillment come soon!

 

Jesus, Take the Wheel

Last week my sermon considered faith -- what it is and why we have it. This week, my sermon is about trust, which is a natural consequence of faith. After all, if we have faith in someone, doesn't it make sense for us to trust that person? Do what does it mean to trust God? This sermon uses the words of a popular song to consider the answer to that question.

If any of you are country music fans, you might recognize the title of today’s sermon as the title of a song by Carrie Underwood. It tells the story of a young woman who is driving home on Christmas Eve to see her family, her baby asleep in the back seat. In the words of the song, she was “low on faith and gasoline,” and because she had a lot on her mind, she wasn’t really paying attention to the road. Before she knew it, she was spinning on a sheet of black ice, out of control and heading for disaster. Terrified, she cried, “Jesus, take the wheel. Take it from my hands! I’m letting go; so give me one more chance and save me from this road I’m on. Jesus, take the wheel!”

I’ll let the words to the song tell you the rest of the story. “It was still getting colder when she made it to the shoulder and the car came to a stop. She cried when she saw that baby in the backseat sleeping like a rock. And for the first time in a long time, she bowed her head to pray. She said, ‘I’m sorry for the way I’ve been living my life. I know I’ve got to change, so from tonight, Jesus, take the wheel.’”

That’s a powerful song. Maybe it touches you deep down inside like it does me. Every time I hear that song, I wonder whether I’m really letting Jesus take the wheel of my life, or whether I’m actually being a back-seat driver. You all know about back-seat drivers. Back-seat drivers are supposed to just be along for the ride, but they really want to be in charge of the whole trip. Back-seat drivers are always making comments and suggestions, and telling the driver what to do. Back-seat drivers don’t trust anybody else to get them where they need to go. When we try to be back-seat drivers with our lives, we undermine all God’s efforts to make our lives meaningful. God can get us where we need to go if we’ll just take our hands off the wheel and get out of God’s way!

The author of Deuteronomy didn’t know anything about cars or steering wheels or back-seat drivers, but he did know that there are two ways that we can live our life: God’s way… and the world’s way. God’s way leads to a rich, full life. God’s way is making time for prayer, loving others as much as we love ourselves, and showing our faith through deeds of charity and compassion. The world’s way is very different. The world’s way is harshness, selfishness, and judgment. The Scriptures say that in the end, it leads to death. “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction,” says Deuteronomy. “Choose life, so that you and your children may live.” If we let Jesus take the wheel and drive us God’s way, we will travel the road of life. If we don’t, we’ll end up on the road to death.

That seems easy enough. There’s no secret to how to live God’s way. We can read it over and over and over in scripture. We should “do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with God.” That’s the prophet Micah’s summary of it (6:8); and the Old Testament law and the other prophets and all the Gospels say the very same thing. We all know what we should do; but very few people actually do it. Why do you suppose that is the case? I think that, in the end, it is an issue of trust.

Let’s go back to that song again, and the image of Jesus as our driver. Jesus is the only one who knows what’s on the road ahead. If we want to say safe, we really need to trust him. We don’t have a road map of the future or a GPS system that will tell us which decisions will bring us joy and which ones will bring us pain. We can’t see beyond the limited vision of our imaginations. Like driving using the headlights on a car, we can only see so far ahead. And there are bumps ahead of us that might run us off the road altogether. We can’t see those coming up. We have to trust in something beyond our limited selves. Now, if we have faith that God exists, and if we have faith that God is a loving God, and if we have faith that Jesus is God incarnate, then doesn’t it make sense to trust Jesus as our driver?

The trouble is that Jesus frequently drives us over roads that don’t look very appealing. For example, loving others as we love ourselves is a very difficult road to travel. It’s full of bumps and ruts. And that road of mercy and compassion is really hard to stay on! Why, sometimes we can’t even be sure where the sides of the road are. The road of selfishness and judgment, though, is wide and well-paved. It’s easy to see where that road goes! And sometimes Jesus drives us right into a tunnel that’s so black that we can’t see our nose in front of our face. Those are the times that we wonder if Jesus really knows where he’s going. And those are the times when we really do have to trust him to take the wheel.

Maybe you’re still wondering whether you should let Jesus take the wheel of your life. Would you like some examples of people who let God do the driving? Just read Hebrews 11. It gives a whole list of people who had enough faith to let God drive their lives. Abraham is a great example. Abraham heard God tell him to leave his ancestral home and go somewhere else – somewhere he had never been before. In fact, he didn’t even know where he was going; but he trusted God enough to travel to an unknown land. Moses is another example. After being brought up in the palace of Pharaoh, Moses fled from Egypt and made his home in what we now call the desert of Sinai. Years later, God told him to go back to Egypt and confront Pharaoh – and then to lead the Israelite slaves out of Egypt. Despite his misgivings – and he had a lot of them – Moses trusted God enough to do just that. And what about Esther? Esther isn’t in Hebrews 11, but she should be. Esther was the queen of Persia when she heard about a plot to kill all the Jewish people. She risked her life to go to the king and expose the plot. Because she let God take the wheel of her life, the entire Hebrew nation was saved.

“Jesus, take the wheel!” That’s not just the title of a great country and western song. It should be what we say every single morning, right after we get out of bed and give thanks for another day of life. It’s a good thing to say when we have a difficult decision to make, and we pray for guidance. And it’s a good thing to say when we are tempted to hate, or to take revenge, or to despair of our lives. Remember the choice that Deuteronomy gives us. “I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. Choose life, so that you and your children may live.”

Yes, choose life. Let Jesus take the wheel.

 

What We Can't Prove

What is "faith" anyway? Is it a blind belief in something imaginary? Some people seem to think so. Do only gullible people have faith? Or does it go much deeper than that? This sermon examines what "faith" is. You may be surprised to find who has it!

What is faith? Have you ever stopped to think about that? We talk about “faith” all the time, but do we know what it really is? Lots of people have weighed in with their own answers to that question. Some answers are serious and thoughtful, while others… well, not so much. Mark Twain, for example, was of the opinion that “faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” I love Mark Twain’s insights; but on this issue, I think that he missed the mark. The book of Hebrews gives us a traditional answer: “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” That sounds really good, but I’ve always thought that it’s a little hard to understand.

Maybe a more recent author can help us out. Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, describes faith this way: “Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch.” A belief in what you can’t see or prove or touch… Yes, that’s faith, all right. And she goes on to comment: “Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith, and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.”

I think Ms. Gilbert understands faith very well. Faith is what we believe in that we cannot see or touch or prove. You might be surprised to learn that Christians aren’t the only ones who have faith. Everyone has faith in something that they can’t see or touch or prove. Technically, that something is called a worldview. Most Americans believe in one of two opposing worldviews that they cannot prove.

Some people believe that the universe is the result of random chance. In the view of these folks, the universe doesn’t have a creator that guides it and sustains it. In this faith system, there isn’t any god – not the Christian God or any other god. And although we humans are a part of the universe, that universe doesn’t care about us one way or another. In fact, there is a very good possibility that the universe is against us! This is the worldview of an atheist. There is no God, no purpose, and no hope.

On the other hand, we Christians believe that God created the universe. God designed it and set it up, and is still active in it today. We are a part of God’s creation, and God loves us because we are. The creator of the universe is on our side! There is not only a God; that God loves us and makes us a part of a grand design. Although we don’t know what that design is, we are convinced that there is one. This is the worldview of a Christian. There is a God, a purpose, and a hope.

Now, it’s important to understand that no one can prove either worldview. No one can prove that God exists… but no one can prove that God doesn’t exist, either. And we can’t call on science to give us the answer. Science can’t help us with this question. Science can tell us all kinds of things, but it can’t tell us if God created the universe. It can’t tell us if miracles are real. And it certainly can’t tell us if God loves us! Science can’t prove either one of these two worldviews. Which one you believe, in the end, is a matter of faith. There are people who are brought up as Christians, but then decide that Christianity is all a bunch of hogwash; and they switch from one worldview to another. They are caught up in the fact that God can’t be proved; and they forget that God can’t be disproved, either.

So… why put our faith in the Christian worldview? Why decide that God exists, and that he loves us? Why not just flip a coin to decide what to put our faith in? It’s a good question. And the answer lies in our own experiences.

Have you ever stood outside on a starry night and gazed up into the Milky Way? Every one of those stars is a little sun, light years away from our earth. Some of that starlight has been traveling for millions of years to get from its origin to our eyes. Maybe you’ve even seen pictures of the universe that were taken by the Hubble telescope. There are great clouds of space dust that are shaped like horses. There are clusters of galaxies that look like giant eyes floating in the blackness of space. And I recently saw a photo of a dying star that looks like a fragile white butterfly. How in the world could anything that vast, that intricate, and that beautiful arise by chance? I personally don’t think that it could.

Maybe you’re having a bad day – the kind of day when nothing goes right and everything goes wrong. On that day, you can’t even find somebody to talk to. You call friend after friend on the phone, but no one has time for you. But then, you feel a Presence right next to you… a loving, reassuring Presence; and you know without understanding how that everything will be OK. Some people call it a hallucination. I prefer to call it the Spirit of Jesus who makes himself known when we need him the most.

Or maybe you’ve even sat by the bedside of a dying loved one, standing vigil until their very last breath has come and gone. And afterwards, through your profound grief, you experience what the New Testament calls the peace that passes all understanding. You aren’t worried for them. In fact, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you will be reunited with them one day when your own life is over. Where does that kind of confidence come from? I think it’s the Holy Spirit working, the Comforter who never leaves us desolate.

Friends, the only explanation for those experiences is God – a God who created the universe, who stands by us in our hour of need, and who welcomes us home at the last. We can’t prove that God exists. But our experiences tell us that he does! And because of those experiences, I choose to put my faith in the God who inspired the collected writings of the Bible; the God who came to us as a human being in Jesus Christ; the God who comes to us still as the Holy Spirit.

Now, you might be thinking right now that your faith is a little thin! Don’t worry about that. Everybody feels that way now and then. Everyone has ups and downs in their faith. One day, we have no doubt at all that God exists; and the next… well, the next day we’re not so sure. Don’t worry about that, either. God knows that we’re human, and that we have questions and doubts. Doubts won’t kill your faith. They might even make it stronger! After all, if you can’t question your faith, then it’s not much good to you. Faith isn’t the absence of doubt. Faith is plugging on despite your doubts. You might even ask God to help you with those doubts. Remember the man who asked Jesus, “I believe! Help my unbelief”? Jesus didn’t condemn him. He helped him!

Faith is, in the end, the foundation of our lives. But it’s a leap in the dark, a step into uncertainty. God asks us to put our faith in him without a shred of proof. Will you do it?

Bait and Switch

Reading texts from the prophets is always challenging, but understanding them is well worth the effort. In this sermon, I consider a classic text from Isaiah and examine how it works in the minds of Isaiah's listeners. And that includes us!

Bait and switch. It’s an old trick used by salespeople to bring customers into their store. It works like this. An item is advertised at a very good price: $200, for example, for a very nice refrigerator. The price is so good, in fact, that it gets people’s attention. But that refrigerator is really just the bait. When all those people get to the store, they’re told that that refrigerator has sold out; and would they be interested in another model instead? Of course, this other model costs significantly more. That’s the switch. And once you’re in the store, it can be very hard to resist high pressure sales tactics.

Bait and switch. Get people’s attention by advertising a low-priced item; get them into your store; and then sell them something else at a higher price. It’s a classic sales trick. But you may be surprised to learn that the ancient Israelite prophets used a tactic very similar to this to get people to hear what they had to say. After all, nobody wants to listen to a prophet who might condemn you for what you have done – or haven’t done. This morning’s reading from Isaiah is a great example of this kind of strategy.

For a moment, put yourself in the shoes of a land owner living in Jerusalem way back in about 600 BCE, back in the time of Isaiah. Although you live in the city, you have a little plot of land outside the city gates where you grow wheat or barley or olives. You rely on that land to produce not only enough food to feed your family, but a little bit extra that you can sell at the market. You can’t afford to own land that doesn’t produce anything. On this particular day, you’re out in the streets – maybe on your way to worship in the Temple – and you hear a man on the corner lamenting some bad luck. In particular, he’s complaining about a vineyard. You have a vineyard yourself; and so you stop to listen.

“My poor friend,” he is saying. “He owns a vineyard, and it isn’t doing very well. And it’s not like he hasn’t put any work into it! He spent months getting all the stones cleared off the land; and he spent a ton of money to buy the very best grapevines. He built a winepress so the wine he made would be from the very freshest grapes. Why, he even built a tower in the middle of it so that he could watch to see that nobody stole those grapes! But then, when he was ready to enjoy the wine from his very own grapes – why, that wine was so sour that it made his mouth pucker! What did he do wrong? You tell me – what did he do wrong?? What else could he possibly have done?”

As you listen to his story of woe, you think about your own land. Yes, you cleared stones from your land, too… and bought the very best grapevines… and set up a winepress. What else could he have done? Why, nothing else! That poor man has done all that he possibly could to get a good harvest. And so, the anger that you hear next seems justified, even if it might be a little bit extreme. “I’ll tell you what he’s going to do to that vineyard! He’s so mad that he’s going to rip out all the grapevines and burn them. He’s going to knock down the fence around it so that all kinds of wild animals can root around in it. And if it never sees rain again, so much the better! Good riddance to it!” Yes, you think, why would he waste any more effort on a piece of land that is so disappointing? He’s done all that he can do. Why, I might do the very same thing if it were my land. That vineyard is useless!

Have you recognized the bait? The folks who listened to Isaiah’s story about the vineyard were completely suckered in to agreeing with the farmer’s anger. After all, they had all experienced bad seasons in which all their hard work came to nothing. They all knew the frustration of clearing land, cultivating the soil, and planting the best seeds, only to get nothing for all their efforts. “Mad? You bet I’d be mad, too!” That’s what they’re all thinking by now. But now, after the bait, comes the switch. “This vineyard is YOU!” Isaiah cries. “The Lord God owns this vineyard, and YOU are the grapevines! YOU are the ones who are making God so angry! God expects justice from his people; but what does he get? Violence everywhere! You can’t even live together without causing each other pain and suffering!” Isaiah doesn’t say it in so many words, but surely his audience was thinking it. God has put a lot of effort into the people of Israel. God led them out of Egypt and parted the Red Sea in front of them. God gave them the Law at Mt. Sinai so that they would know what was expected of them. And if that weren’t enough, God sent judges and kings and prophets to interpret that Law. They had no excuses for their behavior.

Bait and switch. Isaiah used it to get through to people who didn’t want to listen to him. He drew them in with a non-threatening story; and then he switched it so that his audience realized they were actually listening to a message that they needed to hear themselves. Preachers do it all the time, too. They get the interest of their congregations by telling stories about Old Testament prophets and people who lived over 2,000 years ago. And just about the time that their listeners start to wonder how in the world those old-time Israelites could be so thick, they make the switch. I’m doing it right now, as a matter of fact. The vineyard belonging to the Lord is the Christian church, and the garden that he loves is all of us. God looks for justice, but sees only violence and hears only cries of pain.

We can’t get away from Isaiah’s message by claiming that it is only history. Oh, it is that – but Isaiah also speaks the word of God to us today. We are God’s vineyard; and God has put even more work into us than he put into the long-ago nation of Israel. God came to us in Jesus Christ to show us by his life what our own lives should look like. Jesus was crucified and resurrected so that our own lives might be rich and full. God sent his own Spirit to guide us in our day-to-day decisions. And what does God ask of us in response? That we strive for justice. That we show mercy. And that we make compassion the very foundation of our lives. But – today, as in long-ago Israel – God weeps as he looks at our world. The courts favor those with money and influence; and the little guy seldom gets a break. Children go to bed with stomachs growling in hunger. Wall Street bankers are paid millions of dollars, while young families can’t afford to buy a home. What’s wrong with us? What part of “Love your neighbor as yourself” don’t we understand?

When I was attending General Synod in June, each session ended with theological reflections on the actions that we had just taken. In one such session, we were reminded that we middle-class Americans wield the most power of almost anyone in the world. We have the power of free speech. We have the power of the pen. And we certainly have the power to change our own behavior! And God wants us to use that power – to use it to speak up for the oppressed, to share the stories of those who have no voice, and to behave like followers of Jesus Christ ought to behave!

What would happen if we all did just that? What would happen if we all resisted violence and suffering with our voices, our pens, and our very lives? I’ll tell you what would happen. The wine from our vineyard would be sweet and rich and flavorful. It would be the very best wine, as good as the wine that Jesus offered at the wedding in Cana. Sour grapes? Not here! And God would look at us in pride and say, “This is my vineyard! I am so proud of it!”