Sunday, July 21, 2013

For Silver and Sandals



July 21, 2013
Amos 8:1-12
1This is what the Lord GOD showed me-a basket of summer fruit. 2He said, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A basket of summer fruit." Then the LORD said to me, The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by. 3The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day," says the Lord GOD; "the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place. Be silent!" 4Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, 5saying, "When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, 6buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat."
7The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. 8Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?
9On that day, says the Lord GOD, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. 10I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.
11The time is surely coming, says the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. 12They 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.


Sermon: “For Silver and Sandals”

We live in a small town, so y’all will probably hear about it.  I might as well tell you myself.  There is a certain activity that several local Presbyterian pastors and I enjoy, one that requires a covert rendezvous in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in Sanford and then piling into an old van to head to Durham.  You should be worried.

Every few weeks throughout the Spring and Summer, we go see the Durham Bulls play.  While baseball is my favorite sport to watch, there’s a lot I don’t know about it.  But thankfully, my pastor friends have evangelized me in the ways of this great American pastime.  Take, for example, pitching.   I’ve learned that a fast pitch can top 95 miles per hour (at least for a Triple-A team), and that a curve ball looks surprisingly slow and easy to hit (coming it at a mere 72 miles per hour or so), until it slyly veers at the very last moment.  So the difficulty in a curve ball seems to how it sneaks up on a batter, feigning being ordinary, slow even.

Now, maybe I’ve been watching too many Bulls games, but when reading this Amos text, I couldn’t help but feel like the lectionary threw us a curve ball.  And, while I don’t believe baseball was invented in the time of the prophet Amos, he clearly knew how to throw a curve ball. 

Here goes the pitch:

“See this lovely basket of sun-ripened, summer blueberries?  Can’t you just taste their sweetness, and imagine them celebrated in cobblers, pancakes and jams?”

And here comes the curve:
“The end has come.  God is fed up with you people.  Death follows your way of greedy living.  Listen up!  You trample the needy to get to the top.  You can’t wait for worship to be over so you can go back to making money.  You intentionally cheat the poor with false balances, placing silver and sandals at a greater value than another human being, or God.  No longer can this continue!”

And the people of Israel (and us) are left frozen with a useless bat in our hands, wondering what just happened.  But he doesn’t stop there…

“You’ve forgotten me, says the Lord.  But guess what?  I won’t forget you.  I won’t forget all of the prideful things you have done.  You’ve made the world revolve around you, so I’m going to show you that it does not.  The sun will go down at noon, and at day break I’ll make the earth as dark as midnight.  I’ll take your gluttonous feasts and turn them to ashes in your mouth.  All you’ve known is pleasure, at the expense of the poor.  Now, all you will know will be bitterness.”

Amos gives one final warning in this curve ball:

“The time is coming when you will experience a famine like you’ve never known.  Not a famine for food, or water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.  You will wander from sea to sea, the whole world over, in search of me, but you will not find me.”

The people of Israel and us are left thinking, “Can’t we just go back to talking about blueberries?  That was so much more pleasant.”

We Presbyterians like to dwell on the pleasantries of faith, don’t we?

I think this is why, when having a discussion with a Baptist camp counselor this week at Camp Monroe, she asked me what Presbyterians believe, specifically posing “Do you believe in sin?”  I’ve heard some of you from time to time comment that, growing up, every Sunday the sermon was about sin, and now it seems like church is always about making people feel good.  This is in some ways true.  Sin is not a topic we enjoy discussing: give us grace and redemption over hellfire and damnation any day.  To go back to our earlier metaphor, give us a nice predictable ordinary pitch over a curveball. 
I did, though, tell that counselor, that yes, we believe in sin, but not just one sort, several kinds.  I explained that I didn’t mean there were varying degrees of sin (some being greater than others), but that Presbyterians see sin in different ways, such as the sin of an individual willfully harming another person just as much as the sin of an economic system willfully harming those on the margins. 

Now, I wish this wasn’t the case.  I wish I could just believe that sin meant me having my own little angel on one shoulder and devil on the other, and me just listening to the wrong voice.  If sin was only personal, it would be so much easier to manage, and to point fingers at others and not ourselves.

But Amos, that sly pitcher-prophet, reminds us that sin is not just personal.  In fact, the whole of scripture, especially the words of Jesus, spends a much greater time speaking about sins that are corporate: sinful cities, sinful households, sinful kingdoms, sinful religious communities, sinful economic structures.
Like the people of Israel longing for a fresh helping of blueberries instead of the inevitable devastating effects of their sin, we would like to just skip this lectionary week.  To swing, miss, and let it go by.  Because that curve ball hits just a little bit too close to home.

Whatever our political beliefs, it cannot be denied that the rich are getting richer, and the poor getting poorer.  The demand on our government aid for the poor grows as rapidly as the call for massive cuts in funding for education.  Technology is creating astounding opportunities for medical and career advancement…but only for those who can afford it.  For those who can’t, the gap between have’s and have-not’s, between rich and poor, widens.

And this preacher has an ipad whose parts are linked to harsh labor factories in China, and a smart phone containing a metal that is mined in the Congo, the profits of which continue to support violence there.  That is only one small example of corporate sin, the ways that sin has a massive impact when baptized as “good” or “profitable” or “trendy” by those with power.  There are countless other examples.

I may not buy the poor for silver and the needy for sandals, but I do buy the poor for a smartphone and the needy for my own amusement.   If I’m honest (which I try to be), I would love for sin to be individual -- to be blissfully ignorant of my lifestyle’s impact on the rest of the world.  This yearning for ignorance is why guys like Amos don’t get invited to worship on Sundays very often.  He’s too political, too uncomfortable, too demanding.  We don’t like his God very much.

Will Willimon says it well, “One way you can tell the difference between a true and living God and a dead and fake god is that a false god will never tell you anything that will make you angry and uncomfortable!”

If we worship the god of self-gratification at the expense of the poor in our own backyard and in the rest of the world, we’ll find that, like Amos warned, we have silenced God.  Allowing God to only speak in the realm of certain sins or pre-approved comfortable categories, we will find that God has nothing new to say to us.  We will wander from this spiritual practice to that self-help movement, and God will be far from us, among the poor we have tried so hard to forget.

There is a time to speak of sin.  And Amos tells us that, when economic growth that only benefits the wealthy and comfortable becomes normative, when the poor are a number while the privileged have names and votes, when church is only as important as the money it makes, it is time.  It makes me uncomfortable, and I’m sure it does for y’all, too.  But maybe in naming the ways we have sinned as a people, and as a nation, we can begin to hear the voice of God once more over all of the other gods of greed and comfort we have worshipped. 

Perhaps in that discomfort is our salvation.  For in that place of admitting we have not lived as we should, we find something beautiful.  We find that it is not all up to us.  That we are not nearly as important or independent as we thought we were, but that we can do important things for others.  We find that there is a Savior who not only takes our individual and corporate sin upon himself, but who shows us that another way is possible. 

As individuals, we are capable of inflicting great harm on one another. As a group, we are capable of inflicting even greater harm.  But the reverse is also true!  By the grace of God, we as individuals can practice faithfulness to God through faithfulness to those on the margins. 

And as a community, we can proclaim that in our awareness of our impact on this world, in our advocacy for those who are silenced, in our ache to be reformed and always reforming by God’s Spirit, God is still speaking.  And while God clearly speaks of sin, helping us hear that word no matter uncomfortable it makes us, we are promised that, in Christ, grace will always have the final word.

Thanks be to the God who has greater standards for us than we have for ourselves, to the Savior who shows that redemption has no limits, and to the Spirit who inspires new life in even the most broken of people and systems.  Amen.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Who Is My Neighbor?


Luke 10:25-37

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.' Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."


Sermon: “Who Is My Neighbor?”

“A sad, proud remnant of a once mighty community…I found myself staring at any straggling scion of this strange race with a riveted fascination, just as one would stare at a living mastodon.”

That is how Mark Twain described his encounter with my people in 1867.  At one point, there were 300,000 of us, but we had dwindled to a mere 140 by the time Mark came visiting.  But we weren’t a people going extinct, despite all evidence to the contrary.  You see, we are a people of survivors.  We are Samaritans.

Today, there are around 730 of us split between communities in the Israeli city of Holon, near Tel Aviv, and near the West Bank city of Nablus.

I know you’ve heard of us.  Your messiah Jesus told a parable about us and, shockingly, we were the good guys.  One of our own rescued a stranger beaten and abandoned on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.  Your Jesus made us an example of hospitality and compassion across all barriers.  It’s fitting that a Samaritan, instead of the priest or Levite, was the one to stop and help a stranger left behind.  You see, we are a people left behind.

When the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah split after the death of King Solomon, and Judah was taken into occupation by the Assyrians, we remained behind, making Shechem our home.  While the surviving Jews scattered into the whole world, we stayed. 

This is why some of us see ourselves as the “pure Jews.”  We are purists because we only hold to the Torah, the first five books of your Bible, and do not allow for Rabbinic interpretations alongside it like other Jews do.  Our only prophet is Moses, so we do not listen to later prophecies or oral laws.  We do not celebrate Purim or Hanukkah, bar or bat mitzvahs, either.
Our claim to purity has, to put it mildly, made our relationship with the majority of Jews in the world complicated.  They don’t much appreciate our claims to being “most” Jewish, and in fact the Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Nasi long ago decreed that, though we love Torah like they do, we are in every respect, Gentile. 

Persecution has always been a part of our experience.  We were oppressed by the Romans like other Jews.  Hadrian built a pagan temple on our holy site, torched our scrolls, and forbade us to perform circumcisions. Early people of your Christian faith forcibly converted us and in the 5th century expelled us from Gerizim and built a church to Mary on the site.  Later, Muslim rulers banned us from praying or bringing the Passover sacrifice on Mt. Gerizim, a ban that lasted until 1820.

Now, if I’m painting the picture of us as helpless victims like the man on the road to Jericho in your parable, you misunderstand me.  We have contributed to violence and judgment, too.  But even with persecution heaped upon us and dealt out by us, we have survived.
Our extinction was mostly prevented by the encouragement to marry outside of our own people.  Now, we understand our purity as Jews to be about our actions and our adherence to the God’s law, and not our blood.  But we do not only survive.  We engage in the affairs of our troubled homeland because we are the most ancient religious group still there.  One of our people resides on the Palestinian Parliament, and others are recognized as Israeli citizens.  And we still work to see one another as neighbors. 
We call ourselves the Shamerim, which in Hebrew means, “Observant Ones.”  This is clear in your story, But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.' Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

Being a neighbor for us Samaritans does not just mean surviving ourselves.  It means being observant so that those around us might survive.  That is how we know the answer to the question the expert of the Law asked your Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”  The answer is, our neighbor is anyone struggling to survive.  In our place and time, this is why we are active in reconciliation talks between Israelis and Palestinians, so that in our climate of violence, we might all survive.
But you don’t have to be a Samaritan living in the Middle East to struggle to survive.  Every human being knows this struggle in the need to make it home safely, to discover purpose in each day, to find hope that things will get better, to know a life without violence, hate or regret.
What your Jesus taught in his famous parable about us is that survival will not happen if we only stick to our own.  It took a Samaritan who would break religious and cultural customs to touch an injured stranger for him to survive.  And it took our people inviting others into our small community to survive and not go extinct as Mark Twain predicted.
We can only survive in this global neighborhood of God if we stick together.  We must risk ourselves enough to get beyond a history of being left behind or feeling superior, in order to recognize the humanity of the one we could so easily hate.  Loving our neighbor as ourselves is only achieved when we all first become Shamerim, observant ones, that recognize that we are all children of God, with the same longing to survive, and with the same obligation to seek the survival of another. 
What you may not realize from your story about the “good” Samaritan is that, when he decided not to pass by great need, but to instead stop and care for a stranger, he did not just save that stranger.  The Samaritan was saved, too: saved from religion that reached only upwards and not outwards, saved from letting politics and culture motivate more strongly than love and compassion, saved from denying humanity when it was right there in his path on that dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho. 
When we actually see and then care for our neighbors, we are all saved.  We all survive.  Do not pass your neighbor by.  For in their survival is your own, in their salvation is your own.    Or as your wise Jesus put it, “Do this and you will live.”  Amen.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Carry the Weight


Image Source


July 7, 2013
Galatians 6:1-16
1My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. 2Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. 4All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbor's work, will become a cause for pride. 5For all must carry their own loads.
6Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher.
7Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. 8If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. 9So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up. 10So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.
11See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand! 12It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that try to compel you to be circumcised-only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. 13Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh. 14May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 15For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! 16As for those who will follow this rule-peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.


Sermon:  “Carry the Weight”

I love airports.  I know, I know, they’re loud, stressful and a cup of coffee costs $6.  But I love them because they allow me to do one of my favorite activities: people watch.  If people watching was an Olympic sport, it would be held in airports. 

There are all sorts of folks wandering this way and that in search of a seat near an electrical outlet or a Starbucks.  And this great variety of people all have one thing in common.  Do you know what it is?  (Other than inevitable air travel.) Everyone is wheeling or carrying a bag.  Everyone. 

The grandmother in a floral cardigan carries a Vera Bradley quilted bag.  The businessman in khakis has a well-worn leather suitcase with wheels.  The middle-aged woman with white plastic platform go-go boots on has a pink glittery case.  Even the toddler in his pajamas pulls along a tiny Spiderman suitcase behind him.  Everyone has baggage.

A disembodied voice comes over the intercom every fifteen minutes to give an important message to all of us people with bags, saying, “The Federal Aviation Administration reminds you that unattended baggage can be regarded as a threat to national security.  Never leave your bag unattended or allow anyone else to hold it for you.”

And we listen, y’all.  We clutch our bags like they are full of gold and not old clothes.  We wheel them awkwardly into miniscule bathroom stalls; we suspiciously eye the airport employee gate checking bags to assess whether or not he will steal it; we endlessly try to stuff them into an overhead bins above our seats they can’t possibly fit into.  Oh, yes.  We listen to that voice.

But it doesn’t just speak in the airport.  We allow that voice to tell us that the baggage of others is a threat to us in other places as well. 

We listen to this voice when we avoid eye contact with the sopping wet man trying to sell newspapers in downtown Southern Pines, because we feel guilty to be driving by in a dry, comfortable car while he stands there, day after day.

We listen to this voice when we refer to a certain part of town as a “rough area” even though we’ve never been there and can’t name a single person who lives there, because it happens to be a neighborhood full of people with a different color skin than us.

We listen to this voice when we hear that a friend is hurting and pull away from them to “give them space to heal” rather than doing what they need most, which is sitting down beside them in their sorrow.

We listen to this voice when hear horrific stories on the news of fires and shootings and then quickly distract ourselves with something more upbeat and entertaining.

We listen to this voice when we clutch to our baggage of regret, worry or anger as if it were priceless, never allowing another person to see it, much less touch it or carry some of it for us.
We listen to this voice because deep down, in the core of our frightened souls, we believe that the troubles of another are a threat to our own sense of security.  If we open the floodgates of compassion, will we lose ourselves?  Will the sorrows of the world weigh us down?  It is better to just keep our baggage of pain zipped up tight, and encourage others to do the same.  It’s better to just carry our own weight around, and no one else’s.

Except that it’s not.  The author of the letter to the Galatians says that we are to, “bear one another’s burdens and in this way fulfill the law of Christ.”  But then he seems to contradict himself a few sentences later, saying, “For all must carry their own load.”

Oh, we like to adhere to that second statement, while quietly ignoring the first.  The fabric of the world (when woven by those with wealth) is made of that statement.  We have a lot of different ways of saying it: “Every man for himself; Pull yourself up by your bootstraps; Meet your needs first, then you can meet the needs of others.”  But though we try to use this verse to justify our preferred lifestyle, it doesn’t allow us to.

You see, the writer of this letter used two different words here.  When he wrote, “bear one another’s burdens”, that word “burden” means heaviness, trouble, weight.  He’s literally saying, “carry the weight of one another.” 

In that second statement, when he said, “all must carry their own load,” the Greek word for load is “phortion.”  What English word does that sound like?  Portion.  We are to carry the weight of each other while at the same time carrying the portion that is our own.
We fulfill the law of Christ – which is to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves – by bearing the burdens of another, no matter what portion we might be carrying around ourselves.  We do not wait until the load is lifted off of us to hold the load of another.  It is actually in carrying the weight of another’s pain that our own portion becomes easier to bear.

Now, I’m not advocating that the next time you’re in an airport, y’all start grabbing people’s bags and shouting, “I’m carrying your baggage, God told me to!”  That would surely put you in a scary room with no windows, and I doubt you would make your flight. 

But I am suggesting an alternative voice speaking to us, one that is quite the opposite of that disembodied voice calling us to protect ourselves against all costs.  It is the voice of God.  And that voice is saying, “I know you have a portion of pain you are carrying around.  But so does everyone else.  It will go much easier for all of you if you will carry someone else’s weight, too.”

God’s voice says this because God knows what lies beneath that deepest of insecurities in our souls that feels threatened by the troubles of another person.  It is fear.  But not just any fear.  It is the fear that we are all alone in this world.  That those around us are seeking to bring us harm and manipulate us.  That giving some of our load to another to carry means they might take advantage of us.  That we are the only person feeling weighed down. 

There is only one way to assuage that fear: loosening our grip on our own baggage that we might hold someone else’s.  Embracing the vulnerability of looking another person in the eyes and smiling, making friends in a neighborhood where we are uncomfortable, loving one another enough to pull closer in times of sorrow rather than pulling away, meeting the needs of our neighbors before our own, and inviting them to celebrate being a part of God’s neighborhood here on Saturday.

God’s voice calls us to carry one another’s weight.  But we don’t have to.  We can continue listening to that voice telling us to be afraid and stumble along with our heavy, awkward burdens all on our own.  But we will not be fulfilling the law of Christ or working for the good of all, and we will not become the new creation we are invited to be.  It is our choice: which voice will we listen to? 

I hope we will choose to listen to the voice of God over the voice of fear.  I hope we will risk our own independence and pride enough to let someone else carry a bit of our weight, and to carry some of theirs as well.  As you discern how God might be calling you to a new journey of burden bearing for others, listen and pray the words of this song, called “Carry the Weight” by Denison Witmer. 


Amen.