Voices of the Past

PROPERS:          2 EPIPHANY, YEAR C

TEXT:                JOHN 2:1-11                

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 16, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The words of modern-day prophets bear truth – and those truths are still hard to hear.

 

            Preaching today has caused me more internal struggle than I have encountered in years. I have actually written two sermons but have discarded one.  The Spirit wouldn’t let me rest.

 

            It might be because this sermon is confessional in nature. I am laying my struggles out.

 

            Garrison Keillor, the host of Prairie Home Companion for many years, quoted his longtime character, Lutheran Pastor Inqvest, as saying that when a preacher says he has a confession to make, his congregation immediately wonders “Who is he having an affair with, and for how long?”

 

            I want to assure you all, it is not like that. My confession is the difficulty of this sermon.

 

            You may or may not know I like to please people.  That has been one of my growing edges over my years in ordained ministry.  Sometimes, I would pull punches in the pulpit.

 

            I am torn on occasion because there are people in this congregation – and in every congregation I have served – that I love deeply.  I care for them. I do not wish to alienate them.  But I differ with them profoundly.  Nevertheless, they deserve my care, my affections.

 

            As a result, I have developed a style of preaching that is indirect – it is suggestive.  I describe it as P-Stylepreaching, based on the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory. It means my messages are frequently open-ended, suggestive, and leave the lesson for the individual to apply to his or her life. Seldom do I say, that’s the way it is, and that settles it. I think there is too much of that, anyway.

 

            One of the truths I have known is that I could be wrong.  I bear that in mind. It keeps my views from being too strident… and hopefully keeps me humble.

 

            Which brings me to today, and my current struggles.

 

            I have an approach to preaching that dictates that I always preach from the lectionary – the lessons assigned for today.  What I call Hallmark Holidays, such as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and the like seldom get much mention. Such dates may be worthy and laudable. However, if the date and lesson are not in the church calendar, I do not preach on it. The Word of God is more important to me.

 

            So, what do I do today?

 

            The gospel lesson is one of the most notable we hear in our three-year cycle.  It is the story of Jesus changing the water to wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee.  It is found only in the Gospel according to John, so it bears notice.

 

            But this day is more complicated than that.  We are in what I call a feast sandwich. We are betwixt and between the official Feast Day of Martin Luther King and the federal observance of the holiday named for him.  Yesterday was the official feast day.  Tomorrow is the holiday.

 

            Some people still have very mixed feelings about those observances.  Those mixed feelings come from cultural perspectives that have become ingrained in them. I hear those echoes.

 

            Trust me, I know.  I grew up in Mississippi, the ground zero for much of the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. Much of my youth was spent in Meridian, Mississippi, where a lot of the violence against civil rights workers originated. It is a tough, blue collar, railroad town known for its hard-knuckled history.

 

            I was formed in a society which clearly had levels of existence.  My grandmother’s house had a separate bathroom set aside for the maid.  My parents paid our full-time housekeeper two dollars a week. My great-grandfather, who I adore and for whom our son is named, was in the cotton business. Need I say more?

 

            I was greatly influenced by our culture.  I remember an outdoor spend-the-night party in a friend’s backyard. In the dark and with close friends, I spewed racial venom that makes me cringe today.  A short time later, the father of my friend who hosted that party was run out of town because the father, an Episcopal priest, had comforted the families of the three civil rights workers slain outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi.

 

            Those tragic killings of those three young men began to change my views.  My father’s courage at that time also affected me. He had decided to travel a different path from some of those around him. We were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan for a short time.  On election night 1968, I had a verbal fight with the man who was later convicted for killing two of the three civil rights workers. 

 

            Over the years, I became more aware – more aware of the power of culture, and more aware of the gospel’s call to me.  It became clearer and clearer.  But it was not easy – and it is never complete.  I hear the words of St. Paul in my head, “Wretched man that I am!  Who will save me from this body of death?” I still struggle with the voices from my past.

 

            I am keenly aware of the Latin saying attributed to the 16^th century protestant leader, Martin Luther: simul Justus et peccator.  I am simultaneously justified and a sinner.

 

            By the grace of God, my bitter water was being transformed into sweet wine. I pray that conversion continues.

 

            The theology of love and non-violence found in the words of Martin Luther King speak to us, maybe even more clearly after the gunshot rang out in Memphis. As you see in reading about the prophets in the Old Testament, they were always rejected and despised.  And the same happened to our Lord. Culture – whatever it may be – has an overriding inertia that can crush a voice crying in the wilderness. It was years later – and through the eyes of faith history – that we could see God’s hand in those trying times.

 

            As I prepared this sermon, I read the lessons for Martin Luther King’s feast day yesterday.  They are as true and instructive today as they were when Jesus spoke them more than 2,000 years ago:

 

²⁷ ‘But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you.

 

³² ‘If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. ³³If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ³⁴If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. ³⁵But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. ³⁶Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.