Boots, Blood, and Babies: Sermon on Isaiah 9

Scripture can be found here...

There are some biblical passages it is incredibly hard to hear with fresh ears: this is surely one of them. Sing it with me:

For unto us a child is born!

Unto us… a Son is given!

Georg Friedrich Handel has made it nearly impossible for us to hear these words of Isaiah without also hearing his glorious setting from “Messiah,” surely the greatest oratorio of all time.

And, by extension, has made it nearly impossible for us to hear these words without thinking of Christmas. Not too long after Jesus walked the hills of Galilee, his followers started scouring their scriptures—what we would call the Hebrew Scriptures, or Old Testament—for words to illuminate their experience of his presence among them. They found many, and this was one of them. Again, we could sing it:

Wonderful Counselor! The Mighty God! The Everlasting Father! The Prince of Peace!

Since that time, Christians have understood these words to point forward to Jesus—that’s why we normally hear this passage on Christmas Eve. Jews, too, have come to understand these words to point to a some-time-in-the-future Messiah.

Today, however, we are going to try to hear the words of the prophet in their original context. This is going to take some work, because the original context is not an easy one. To help us reframe it, I’d like to share some words from the English poet Wilfred Owen. The poem is called “Dulce et decorum est.”

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots 

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est

Pro patria mori.[i]

In that last line, Owen quotes the Roman poet Horace, who said, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”—“It is sweet and good to die for one’s country.” Owen calls that, “the old Lie.”

I know that was jarring to hear, juxtaposed with that gorgeous passage from Isaiah. Owen was born in Shropshire, England to a working class family and modestly educated. He was a soldier in World War I. “Dulce et decorum est” is typical of the shocking, realistic poetry that gained him the reputation as THE English language poet of that war. The poem describes a poison gas attack. Every war seems to add new and horrifying ways in which human beings can harm one another, and the use of various kinds of poison gas was one of distinguishing features of that war. Owen was killed in action a week—almost to the hour—before the signing of the Armistice. He was 25.

In every age, it is as it ever was. In an 1879 speech to the graduating class at Michigan Military Academy, retired General William Tecumseh Sherman said,

I’ve been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here.

Suppress it! You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell![ii]

This is it—the context of our passage today from the prophet Isaiah—a long and bloody siege of the southern kingdom of Judah by the mighty Assyrian Empire.  It is late in the 8^th century BCE, and the northern kingdom has already been swallowed up, and is no more. Just as Owen wrote his poetry, Assyrian artists also worked to preserve memories of war: cities mowed down, as if they’d had Panzers and poison gas at their command instead of Iron Age chariots.

And if you look again, you’ll see that the memory of war is tucked right into this passage. Hear again how the words conjure up the images: walking in darkness…the dividing of plunder… the rods of oppressors… the boots of tramping warriors… the garments rolled in blood…

War is hell.  The prophet Isaiah agrees. It is a particular hell that we human beings seem hell-bent on inflicting on ourselves, over and over again.

And yet, that is not our take-away from this passage. That is not the final word, when God has something to say about it. Isaiah points people to the sign: a baby.

We are accustomed to associating this passage with one particular baby born about eight centuries later, in Bethlehem. The words of prophets are always spoken in a particular time and place, but they also find new meaning in new times. When Isaiah is writing , Ahaz the King of Judah, has his back to the wall. In order to fight a war against the northern kingdom he had allied himself with Assyria. And now Judah is a wholly owned and occupied vassal-state. The king is a king in name only. The glorious era of the Kings of Judah seems to be at an end.

But then, Ahaz becomes a father. Isaiah announces the good news:

For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.              ~Isaiah 9:6-9

Yes, there has been war. And it has been brutal and bloody. But God is not finished. God has something else to say. God has something else to do.

And Hezekiah, that baby, grows up to be very unlike his father. He undertakes sweeping reforms of the religious practices of the people of Judah, re-establishing worship of the one true God.

For the moment, he is still a baby. But the promise of this baby is enough to open the hearts of the people to other glorious possibilities…

That where there was darkness, there will be light…

That where there was sorrow, there will be joy…

There where there were shoulders bowed down with burden, there will be lightness and freedom…

That where there were warriors’ boots and blood-stained garments, there will be a roaring fire, providing warmth…

That where there was war, there will be peace.

God comes into our most desolate places, the places where we are the most destroyed and hopeless, and plants tiny seeds of hope. For Isaiah and the people of Judah, it was a powerless little baby. For us… what is it?

What is your tiny little seed of hope?  What is your flickering flame, springing up in the darkness?

For me, the SNAP challenge is one such little seed. A handful of people trying to live empathetically for just one week, by living on the typical food stamp allotment.

Another is this: The president of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino III, will camp with the people of Tacloban, the area most devastated by last week’s typhoon, until help arrives.

And another: Hundreds of people in San Francisco turned out this week to help a little boy with Leukemia, Miles Scott, step out of the reality of living with cancer, and instead live his dream of being a superhero crime fighter, BatKid.

And another seed of hope: you. I look out at this congregation, and there is not one person here whose kindness I haven’t seen, whose empathy hasn’t shone in some way, whose love hasn’t been demonstrated—whether for someone else in this community, or for strangers far away, or for me.

God comes into our most desolate places, and plants seeds of hope. I invite you this week to tune your vision, sharpen your hearing, stir your senses to notice seeds of hope. Faces, places, moments, times when…

Where there was darkness someone shone a light…

Where there was sorrow someone brought joy…

Where shoulders were bowed down, someone lightened a load…

Where there were signs of conflict, someone brought peace.

God is busy, zealous, already doing all these things. All we need to do is notice, and to say, all thanks be to God. Amen.

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[i] Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et decorum est,” warpoetry.co.uk, http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html.

[ii] William Tecumseh Sherman, as quoted by Dr. Charles O. Brown in the Battle Creek Enquirer and News, 18 November, 1933. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman.

Justice for All: Sermon on Amos 1 and 5

Scripture can be found here...

Imagine a person, called by God, coming to upstate New York from Long Island to preach God’s word to us.

Now imagine a person from Alabama coming here to do the same. Or from Brazil. South Africa. The Philippines.

We might be open to that. We might be grateful. Or, our reactions might fall on a spectrum with “puzzled” at one end and “indignant” on the other.

For your consideration: the 8^th century BCE prophet Amos, a native of the kingdom of Judah, sent by God to preach to the kingdom of Israel. A quick history review: About two generations after David, the monarchy and kingdom the people had longed for split in two, resulting in a divided kingdom: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Amos has been uprooted by God from his modest living as a shepherd (or a landscaper—on the whole, we can say that Amos worked outdoors) to bring his prophet’s voice to a land not his own.

And now, before we go any further: What is a prophet? Despite popular opinion, prophets are not about mystically foretelling tomorrow’s or next month’s or next year’s headlines. Prophets are not sent to give us the Lotto numbers. Prophets are sent to give us the God’s eye view of what is happening today, right now. And, it stands to reason, that a prophet might offer some insight, based on where we are now, as to where we are headed. That’s where the future comes in. Here’s a saying to remember: prophecy is not “foretelling,” it’s “forth-telling.” Prophets are called by God to forthrightly tell the truth.

And, oh my, Amos sounds cranky. The sins of the kings fall into two broad categories: wrong worship (either the wrong gods or the wrong place) and justice (really, the lack of it.)

We have just a few snippets to work with. Amos’ first words are:

The Lord roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem… ~Amos 1:2a

Here we are told why this prophet from the south is empowered to speak the truth to the north: Jerusalem, also known as Zion, is the location of God’s temple. It is God’s home. In Amos’s day, it is regarded by those in the south as the only legitimate place of worship.

As you can imagine, this is extremely awkward for the northern kingdom—that the only legitimate place of worship is in the southern kingdom. Imagine if we had to go to Atlanta for church. Naturally, the kings of Israel respond by building shrines up north, because of their anxiety that pilgrimages to Jerusalem in the south might stir up the feelings of the people against this whole divided monarchy thing, and the kings can’t have that.

Amos is speaking for God, from God’s recognized authentic home on earth. And, Amos says, God’s voice roars from the divine home base in Jerusalem.  Cranky prophet. But really, at this point, cranky God.

God is roaring about worship and justice (or, more to the point, worship and injustice). God’s people are really good at worship. They have festivals and solemn assemblies. They make burnt offerings and grain offerings and offerings of well-being to God (in their not-quite-legitimate northern shrines). They sing! They play the harp! Add an organ and a handbell choir, and we could all agree—they’re good to go!

But God wants none of it. Rather than a rolling melody, God wants justice to roll down. Rather than a flowing chant, God wants righteousness to flow.

So what is justice?

As 21^st century Americans, we have our own notions of justice. We begin to learn and discern what justice is at a very young age, before we even know the word. For some of us, it comes in the voice of our mother, or our Sunday school teacher, telling us “Share with one another. It’s the right thing to do.” And into the file it goes, waiting for a word to describe it. Then we are taught to pledge our allegiance, our loyalty, to the flag. And the final lines hold a promise about the nation behind the flag: “liberty and justice for all.” Into the file it goes.

Our ideas evolve into adulthood, and if we have any education in civics or government, our sense of its meaning probably includes something like this: Justice means that people are held responsible for their actions. Those who are guilty are appropriately punished. Those who are innocent are appropriately set free to live their lives in peace. And the determination of guilt and innocence are made in a court of law, free from bias of any kind. And, and this is important, in the system of justice under which we live, people are considered “innocent until proven guilty” beyond a reasonable doubt.

But our notions of justice find themselves shaped by things other than childhood lessons in fairness and civics. A local paper starts publishing stories of arrests. And there are their photographs, these people whom our system tells us should be considered innocent until the court system proves otherwise.

Or we go to the gym, where, while we’re on the elliptical or the treadmill, there is a television on which we can see a stories unfolding about tragic abductions and sensational murder trials.

Eventually we realize that when we talk about “justice,” what we really mean is “crime and punishment.” Justice used to mean “fairness,” and now it means “retribution.”

Here’s what the bible has to say about justice.

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.  ~Deuteronomy 10:17-18

Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins— you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate.  ~Amos 5:11-12

I did a search—it’s easy to do on the internet, just go to Bible Gateway[i] or Oremus Bible Browser[ii]. Out of 124 Hebrew Scriptures passages where the word “justice” is found, fewer than ten were using it in terms of punishment for crimes committed. Passage after passage about fairness, about caring for the most vulnerable in society—widows, orphans, and strangers—which is to say, immigrants, aliens.

God’s idea of justice is much closer to what we learned as little children, our first lessons on sharing with one another, than with anything held out to us as justice by popular culture. The justice God seeks is much closer to what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called for in his speech at the March on Washington, when he used Amos’s words and called for “justice to roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

The cranky God who roars through Amos’s words is issuing a challenge. Amos has been sent to confront a nation whose values as proclaimed in worship are far, far removed from its values as lived out. Their worship, even in the wrong locations, is beautiful. Their treatment of society’s most vulnerable is ugly.

It is so easy to look away. It got cold this week, and on Friday night I snuggled down in front of a warm fire to watch Great Performances on PBS. Also on Friday I said a little prayer that God would let me see when someone was in need, and, boy, did that prayer get answered quickly. On Saturday morning as I got in my car I heard the voice of a man singing—he sounded kind of like the lead singer in “Cake,” actually. When I finally looked around, there he was—one of those folks who looks like he’s in his 70’s but probably is only 40; hard living ages you. White wispy hair blowing in the wind, a little unsteady on his feet, clutching a pillow to his chest as he walked down the street at 7:30 in the morning. I strongly suspect he spent the night in a place not so warm and cozy.  

It’s easy to be overwhelmed in moments like this. How can we help to heal all the ills of the world? Can we take in every homeless person? Can we feed every hungry one? Can we figure out a solution for those whose problems are rooted in mental illness, or addiction? Pulling our coats around us, and getting in the car, and driving away, seems to be our best option in the face of the impossibility, the enormity of the task. On Saturday morning, that’s what I did.

Here’s what Amos has to say.

Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, just as you have said. Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious…  ~Amos 5:14-15

Seek good. (Which, I’m pretty sure, is another way of saying, “Seek God.”) Love good. Love God.

When we have a big, ginormous problem—and let’s face it, that’s what this is, the suffering of so many people, the injustice of so much of that suffering—the only way to tackle it is in tiny little bite-sized increments. The writer Anne Lamott, giving advice to others seeking to be writers, helps them tackle what seems to be the enormous challenge of writing every day by focusing on small, bite-sized pieces of their work. She tells them to keep a one-inch square picture frame on their writing desk. And then she tells them, to simply write enough every day to fill that one-inch frame. That’s it.

We are all people of faith here. Here’s my version of the one-inch picture frame challenge: Pray one tiny prayer each day for some person, some aspect of this big, ginormous problem of justice for all God’s people. Seek the good, seek God—for the suffering. For the oppressed. For the hungry. For the cold.  When we open up the equivalent of a one-inch square in our hearts, I truly believe God fills those little pockets with hope and inspiration and infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Or, collect your three-cents-a-meal. That’s another one-inch approach. Or, take part in the SNAP challenge, and see what it is to have a food budget of $34.50/ week.[iii] Enter into the struggles of others, in a tiny little one-inch kind of way.

Imagine a person coming from, not just another region, not just another state, not just another country, but another time, in every meaningful sense, another world, to preach God’s word to us. Imagine that, at the heart of that word, is a plea: seek God/ seek good. Love good/ love God. Imagine it in the voice of your mother or father, or your Sunday school teacher or favorite coach. Share. It’s the right thing to do. Share with one another. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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[i] http://biblegateway.com

[ii] http://bible.oremus.org

[iii] The average Food Stamp benefit for residents of New York; it’s the second highest benefit in the country. http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/about/join_the_snap_food_stamp_challenge/

On Saints and Silence: A Sermon for All Saints Sunday on 1 Kings 19:1-18

Scripture can be found here...

There was a terrific article in last Sunday’s Boston Globe, all about the current offerings to be found in movie theaters, and a theme that seems to tie them all together. Ty Burr of the Globe staff writes,

A man lost at sea.[i] A woman marooned in space.[ii] A ship’s captain torn from his crew,[iii] and a family man torn from his freedom, humanity, even identity.[iv]

Our movies are telling us we’re on our own now. The cavalry isn’t coming and Houston has other problems to deal with. If some cultural seasons celebrate teamwork — good people coming together, easily or not, to work toward a common goal — we seem to be in a moment obsessed with the isolated hero.[v]

You don’t have to be Sandra Bullock cut loose from her tether in the vast expanses of space to feel completely and utterly alone. In the perverse ways of the human psyche, you can feel all alone in the same crowded move theater where you are experiencing her terror and disorientation in 3-D.

As babies, our first developmental milestones have to do with looking at our parents’ faces—connection. Babies who are not held can fail to thrive, because touch is nearly as essential as air and nourishment for our health and well-being. We were created to be connected, to be in families, to be in community.

And yet, we can find ourselves, or feel ourselves, very much alone.

Consider Elijah. Our stories of the kings of Israel and Judah come to a crashing conclusion with the dreadful murderous monarchs Ahab and Jezebel. In today’s passage Jezebel puts a bounty on Elijah’s head after he has executed God’s justice upon the 450 prophets of Baal. It’s a long and bloody story. Elijah, understandably, decides to get out of Dodge. He goes to Judah, which takes him out of the jurisdiction of Ahab and Jezebel, and then, into the wild—towards Mount Horeb, the “mount of God,” also known in scripture as Mount Sinai.

Elijah is going to Mount Sinai, where the people of Israel went when they were wandering in the desert.

Elijah is going to Mount Sinai, where God appeared to Moses and presented him with the tablets containing the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

Elijah is going to Mount Sinai. But why?

Elijah’s on his own now. The cavalry seems to have been delayed, perhaps indefinitely, and Houston is having problems of its own. Elijah is our isolated hero.

And so, in this moment, Elijah chooses to return to the place of his ancestors. On this mountain, God gave the covenant that made the people, God’s people. On this mountain, God appeared to Moses and the people in the midst of cloud, and thunder, and lightning, and earthquake, and fire. This is where it all happened. This, in his state of terror and disorientation, is where Elijah wants to be: the place where God came down to meet the people.

It’s different this time, though. This time, God is not in clouds or fire, or earthquake or lightning. God is in… well, listen to all these translations of this tricky little Hebrew phrase.

“a gentle whisper”[vi] … “a sound. Thin. Quiet.”[vii] …“a gentle breeze”[viii] … “a soft murmuring sound”[ix] … “a still small voice”[x] … “a sound of sheer silence”[xi]

Elijah goes searching for a reunion with his ancestors, and reassurance from God, and God’s response is not the great fanfare his ancestors experienced. Elijah finds God in silence.

It’s not that God is not found elsewhere, and it’s no that the earlier experience of Elijah’s ancestors is somehow invalid. God knows many of us have found communion with God in all kinds of places: in worship while singing a hymn that makes us unexpectedly choke up; in a gorgeous vision of autumn leaves swirling in a wind or a beautiful rainbow; looking into the face of someone we love; holding hands in grace around a table.

But sometimes, what we are given is silence.

Some of us are not so very good at silence. I would count myself as falling into this category. While I don’t fill every hour with a TV or radio, I certainly do like something on in my car, whether that is a news station or music or an episode of a podcast I like. It takes discipline for me to carve out time for quiet, discipline I don’t always have access to when I’m feeling stressed—which is usually the time I am most in need of the silence.

We have to make space for silence in this very noisy and distracting world of ours.

In the silence, Elijah is also to hear God’s instruction that he anoint two kings.

In the silence, he also hears this, perhaps startling directive: “You shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place” (1 Kings 19:16b). Elijah is told his days as God’s prophet are coming to a close.

And finally, Elijah is able to hear God provide assurance that, in fact, he is not alone—there is a sizeable faithful remnant, 7000 who have not “bent the knee to Baal,” which is good news. It means that the witness to and worship of God will not disappear with him, but will be carried on by a cloud of witnesses that transcends the relatively small span of his life.

In the still, small voice of God, Elijah is given a powerful and humbling gift: he is given the gift of perspective, like, say, an astronaut who is able, for the first time, to see earth, a small blue marble spinning in the vast expanse of the heavens. Elijah sees his own life, and ministry, and mission—and it is all good, it is very good.

But Elijah is one man, and the Lord of hosts whom Elijah serves is, indeed, the Lord of hosts—untold, countless numbers of faithful people. God’s mission does not begin with Elijah and it does not end with him.

Elijah has just stumbled onto the reality of the communion of saints, which we celebrate today.

In one sense, this is a very sobering reality, the moment when our own mortality is driven home to us. As someone asked me this week, Are you living today in reaction to your job description, or in light of your obituary? It’s a good check-in.

But it is also an incredibly freeing thought. If God has a plan for each of us, work for us to do, then my work isn’t the same as yours, and yours isn’t the same as your co-worker’s, or your spouse’s, or your friend’s. Each of us is free to do the work God has given us—and no more. No less, of course. We have to do our part. But no playing God. No thinking it all depends on us. In the movie “My Fair Lady,” a very angry Eliza Doolittle tries to put Henry Higgins (a guy with a god-complex if there ever was one) in his place by singing, “There’ll be spring every year without you. England still will be here without you! There’ll be fruit on the tree, and a shore by the sea, there’ll be crumpets and tea without you!” The realization that we are members of the communion of saints frees us from the idea that it is all up to us. It reminds us that we are part of a community that extends backwards to the first human beings and forward into a future yet unimagined, except by God. We are not alone. We have companions along the way. God will make sure the earth keeps spinning.

We are not alone, though life can sometimes convince us that we are. I do not want to minimize the reality of loneliness… silence can signify the missing person we so long to see once more. But deeper in the silence is the voice of God, inviting us to do our part in the great and beautiful dance of God’s ministry and creation. And deeper still is a chorus—millions and millions of voices strong, yet made weaker if any of us withholds our voice.

So dance, saints of God! Sing! Join in the joyful mission: listen in the silence for God, and join with your whole heart, and soul, and mind and strength in God’s glorious plan. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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[i] Robert Redford in “All Is Lost.”

[ii] Sandra Bullock in “Gravity.”

[iii] Tom Hanks in “Captain Phillips.”

[iv] Chiwetel Ejiofor in “12 Years a Slave.”

[v] Ty Burr, “At the Movies, Isolated Heroes Tell Us We’re On Our Own,” Boston Globe. Sunday October 26, 2013, http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/2013/10/26/the-movies-isolated-heroes-tell-our-own/GpxJW8lClMhCdSE71ZrEjJ/story.html.

[vi] New International Version.

[vii] Common English Bible.

[viii] Contemporary English Version.

[ix] Jewish Publication Society.

[x] King James Version.

[xi] New Revised Standard Version.

Beloved, Flawed, and Called: A Stewardship Sermon on 1 Samuel 16:1-13

Scripture can be found here...

Whether we know it or not, we are in the midst of a mini-series… I’ll name it, the Rise and Fall of the Monarchy! It began last week with the call of the prophet Samuel, the same Samuel we have in our text today, and it ends November 3, with God’s self-revelation to the prophet Elijah. Hmmmm… Stories of kings bookended with the words of prophets. That fact in itself tells us much of what God’s idea of kingship looks like.

Samuel is all grown up now, a man whose first encounter with God took place as a boy, while he served God alongside the priest Eli. In the intervening years, God has relented—that’s the only possibly way of seeing it—God has given in to the persistent desire of the covenant people to have a king. Samuel is the man standing as the mediator between heaven and earth, and he apparently takes it pretty hard, because God sees fit to console Samuel, and to give him some advice: “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.” God goes on, “Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.” (1 Samuel 8:7, 9). And, oh, Samuel does.

We’ve talked before about God’s laundry list of the things the kings will do. Things like, taking the people’s sons for his armies and daughters for his harems. Taking their crops and their workers and their money, too. Taking, even, their freedom—turning the people into slaves. (1 Samuel 8:11-18)

Not just some kings. Not just bad kings. All kings. “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That is how one 19^th century historian put it.[i] Today psychologists might call it “Acquired Situational Narcissism,” often used to make sense of the bizarre behavior of certain celebrities. God created us, after all, and God is well aware of our flaws.

By the time of our passage, there has already been one king—Saul, chosen by God, and anointed by Samuel, and who, in the end, lost God’s favor and anointing. Samuel is grieving over this. The prophet functioned, not only as the one to lift up and anoint the king and affirm God’s blessing on the king, but also as the most trusted advisor—maybe something like the Chief of Staff, or the First Lady. For you “Scandal” fans: think Olivia Pope, without the tawdry affair.

So once again, God is consoling Samuel. Or, really, telling Samuel to get a move on, get over it, because now there is a vacuum, and another king is required to fill it.

God sends Samuel to Bethlehem, to the house of Jesse, where God promises to name a king from among Jesse’s sons. God also helps Samuel with the anxieties that naturally arise when God is naming another king, but the previous king has not yet gotten the memo. Listen to me, God says, and I will tell you.

Then, notice what happens? The sons of Jesse start their walk down the runway, and Samuel looks at the first one, and in his heart he starts singing, “There he is….!” Only God, keeps speaking. “Not so fast, Sparky.” “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

And one by one they all pass by, and Samuel keeps on looking, and God keeps on whispering in Samuel’s ear, “Not yet.”

Samuel keeps looking. God wants Samuel to keep listening.

Many of you are aware that I spent eight days last week in the hill country of Texas, about 80 miles northwest of San Antonio, taking part in something called “Presbyterian Credo.” Here’s the Credo Mission:

To provide opportunities for clergy to examine significant areas of their lives and to discern prayerfully the future direction of their vocation as they respond to God's call in a lifelong process of practice and transformation.

The Presbyterian Board of Pensions got the idea for Credo from the Episcopalians: to seek out clergy mid-career, and do a kind of intervention. After we’ve been in the parish a little while, sometimes it helps to take a step back, not only so that we can look; but also so that we can listen—to our hearts, to others who are seeking to serve God in the church, and, of course, to God.

So, for eight days I was one of thirty ministers at Mo Ranch (a Presbyterian conference center), all of us between the ages of 34 and 50, and all of whom have been in the parish at least five years. We had seven faculty members—all Presbyterian, many ministers, all experts in some aspect of four basic areas: Spiritual Health, Physical Health, Vocational Health, and Financial Health.

When my plane took off from Syracuse-Hancock Airport early on October 7, I thought I knew what was in store for me at Mo Ranch. I thought it was going to be all about my physical health. I have struggled all my life with my weight, and you have all had a front row seat to that particular struggle for the last 6 years. I hoped that my time at Mo Ranch would enable me to find the energy and passion to make the changes I need to make to achieve a permanent improvement of my overall health.

But Credo surprised me. Credo did so much more. If I had to describe the heart of what I heard God whispering last week, it all comes down to one word: Stewardship. Stewardship across all the areas of life. Stewardship is a word that means, according to the dictionary, “overseeing and protecting.” Another way of thinking about that is, “taking care.”

At Mo Ranch I heard God affirm my hopes for better stewardship of my health with a loud, “Yes!” by means of the presence of a terrific doctor on our faculty, who talked with me, and walked with me, and helped me understand what I’m capable of in terms of exercise and increased fitness. It was also affirmed by a terrain in which, somehow, every single building seemed to be uphill from every other building. I swear I walked uphill all week! It was all a part of a wonderful eight days of more physical activity than I’d had in a long time, and it felt great to move. Stewardship of the body God gave me is the first part of my plan of action as I go forward.

Then, to my surprise, my heart was captivated by my concern for the stewardship of this congregation, and our witness of over 190 years here in the Union district of Endicott. This is our stewardship season, of course. Each week we are hearing from members of UPC, telling us how they found themselves at home here, and, either implicitly or explicitly, encouraging you to join in our campaign of giving towards our annual budget. And I want to say a big “Yes!” and “Amen” to all of that!

But the concern that was awakened in me was, not only for this stewardship campaign, in this calendar year, but for our ongoing care of the gifts we have been given for the future.

By now you have all received the beautiful letter sent out by our Finance, Endowment, and Stewardship Committee. That letter contained information about the state of our endowments; more specifically, on the future of our endowments, if our spending patterns don’t change. As our fund manager from Pittsburgh told us at our meeting on Thursday, we are drawing too much from these funds. Well, what’s the harm in that, you might ask. It’s a great question. Isn’t money meant to be spent? Yes, absolutely—and hoarding is no virtue, as the story of the manna revealed to us. But these funds were never intended to be spent down supporting our annual budget. They are rainy day funds, and funds for building maintenance. And, over the past several years, it has rained like crazy, both literally and metaphorically, and we are blessed, blessed, to have been able to lean on the gifts of our predecessors. But it’s time for us to take a fresh look at our spending—thoughtfully, deliberately, prayerfully, and keeping our mission statement ever in the forefront of that effort. It is time for us to begin.

This afternoon, the Presbytery of Susquehanna Valley will install me as your pastor, and I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. I have been grinning ear to ear for months. And it was an incredible gift to me, at Credo, to hear in my heart a prompting that I am pretty sure came from God to look forward with you: forward to many, many happy, and challenging, and busy years together, yes! And also, to look forward to the time beyond my pastorate here, when I will finally have to hang up my spurs at, oh, age 90 or something like that. I want UPC to be here. I want the loving, serving, welcoming witness of this church to the love of God in the world to go beyond my tenure here. I want it to be here for our children, and our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren; I want it to be here for the strangers, the wanderers and the wayfarers of generations to come; I want UPC to be here.

God whispered in Samuel’s ear that David was the one—David, who, as it turns out, was a pretty good-looking guy after all. David went from herding sheep to being a shepherd for God’s covenant people, and he had a good long tenure as king—40 years! David was God’s beloved, but he was not perfect. David was God’s beloved, flawed, and called servant, and despite his foibles, his missteps, his sins and his crimes, he remains the most celebrated king of the Hebrew Scriptures.

We too, are God’s beloved, flawed, and called servants. We are called to stewardship in every area of our lives—to care for the bodies God gave us, to care for our spiritual growth by listening for God’s whispers in our hearts, to care for the work God has called us to do, and to care for our own finances and those of the organizations we love. I am so glad to be here. I am committed to working with you to ensure that UPC will be here. I pray that the Spirit of God might come mightily upon us, just as it did upon David, to give us strength and joy for our work together. Thanks be to God! Amen.

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[i] John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton (1834–1902).

Bread for the World: A World Communion Sunday Sermon on Exodus 16:1-18

Scripture can be found here...

Look at it from God’s perspective.

These people are a bunch of whiners.

God, over the many chapters we have skipped to get here, has responded to the groaning of the people in slavery with as great a display of power as anyone could imagine—no, greater.

·      The appointment of the nobody/royal insider Moses as their leader. (Remember, Moses was raised by the daughter of a Pharaoh.)

·      The empowering of Moses and his brother Aaron to present themselves to the Pharaoh, at the risk of their lives, with their bold entreaty: Let my people go.

·      The demonstration of God’s fearsome (and persuasive) power by means of the plagues.

·      The parting of the sea so that God’s people could escape Pharoah’s armies, and then, the releasing of that sea, so that Pharoah’s warriors and charioteers could be drowned and God’s power even more mightily displayed.

I’m not going to lie to you—some of those items include a God I don’t much like to ponder, a God who is willing to kill some to demonstrate power, a God I have a hard time getting my head around. But ponder these words, from one of the scholars I’ve read this week:

This is a revolutionary act. Slaves are ignored and irrelevant in the course of history. Gods do not act for slaves, but for kings and empires. This [God] has turned the world and its rules upside down.[i]

Look at it from God’s perspective: These people are a bunch of ungrateful whiners. God has turned history upside down by being the God of the least powerful. And these people are longing for the fleshpots of Egypt.

Now, look at it from the people’s perspective.

They are hungry.

Not in the way we feel when we walk into a bakery—or coffee hour!—and take a whiff of the aromas of delectable foods. Not in the way we feel when lunch is a little late, or when we skip a meal and come to the next one with cranky stomachs. Not even in the way we feel after a couple of hours spent exercising, or a morning spent stripping wallpaper and painting a room. This is real hunger. This is what is known as “food insecurity.” The US Department of Agriculture, which is shut down this week, describes a family as being very food insecure when, “at times during the year, eating patterns of one or more household members [are] disrupted and food intake reduced because the household lack[s] money and other resources for food.” When you are in this state, your stomach is empty, and you are weak from hunger. You don’t have a clue when you will eat next, or how you will legally get that food, for yourself and for your loved ones.

Look at it from the people’s perspective.  They are hungry. And the memory of the fleshpots of Egypt—which is a fabulous word that means, basically, pots of stew with plenty of meat—the memory of them suddenly seems to mock the former slaves’ newfound freedom. Even the memory of something inextricably wrapped up with the memories of oppression starts to sound good, it makes it seem like it wasn’t all that bad, really. That’s what hunger will do to you.

And, of course, hunger is not a problem unique to the ancient world. The hungry are with us still. I know you know that. Sometimes hunger comes to a family during a recession; someone is laid off, and before you know it, someone—sometimes just the adults, sometimes the whole family—has to skip a meal, or even a whole day’s worth of meals. Sometimes food insecurity comes to families as a result of even more sinister economic forces. In Cameroon, the country that gave birth to the wonderful anthem that was our introit this morning, wealthy merchants hoard crops and speculate on their prices, which means that chronic hunger exists in large segments of the population.

But look at it from God’s perspective. This is all about trust.

When God gave the hungry Israelites the gift of the manna, it came with strict instructions. Gather enough for today. On the day before the Sabbath, gather enough for two days, and no more. God’s response to the hungry people was to answer their cries—again—but also to try to coax them into a more intimate and trusting relationship. And just to put a nice, fine point on it, when the people did gather more than they should, when they didn’t trust that the manna would be there the next day… it grew worms. It started to smell bad.

This is all about trust.

It is not easy to trust, apparently, not even to trust a God who has given vivid displays of power. The Israelites wavered in their trust, as food supplies dwindled and disappeared in the harsh, unforgiving climate of the wilderness. And still God continued to demonstrate the divine intention that everyone should have enough, even these wilderness wanderers. As for the rest of us, God has created a world in which there is enough. There is enough farmable land to grow our crops. There are enough seeds to be planted. Most years, there is enough water to help the crops grow. But we know that the food is not necessarily getting into the hands of those who need it. This is where we come in.

To help the people in Cameroon, the Presbyterian Hunger Program, which is supported by our Peacemaking Offering, establishes community-run grain banks, so that the monopoly on grain is broken, and the people can eat. To help the people of the Southern Tier, the Broome County Council of Churches collects food and money to assist those who are food insecure in our midst. In 2012, 22% of the children in the United States were food insecure. That translates to 2900 children in Endicott, 3292 children in Johnson City, 6021 in Vestal, and about 10241 in Binghamton. Twenty thousand children within a few miles of this sanctuary. That is a lot of hunger. That is a lot of need. That is a lot of opportunity for us to make a difference in people’s lives.

Look at it from God’s perspective. God has given enough food for the world. We who already have enough are invited into the holy work of God’s creation and re-creation, as we learn ways to help that food get where it needs to go. It’s like that wonderful song by Saint Susan Werner, in which she sings:

I got plenty and then some… what do I do?

I got plenty and then some… what do I do?

I got plenty and then some… what do I do now?

I go out and help somebody get plenty and then some too.

If I’ve got ‘plenty and then some…’ why wouldn’t I want to help somebody else to have the same?

In a few moments we gather around this table, to be fed bread from all around the world and the fruit of the vine. We did nothing to earn our place at this table. None of us is here because we are good. We are here because God is good. The gift of this table is pure grace, just like the gift of manna to the whining Israelites. We can trust: there is enough. There is enough for us here, and there is enough for God’s vision of plenty to be realized throughout the world. This is where we are nurtured and strengthened for that work. This is where we are fed, so that all God’s people might be fed. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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[i] Beth Tanner, “Commentary on Exodus 16:1-18, Narrative Lectionary/ WorkingPreacher.com, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1811.