Speaking to Us Today?

PROPERS:          PROPER 12, YEAR C  

TEXT:                HOSEA 1:2-10

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JULY 24, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        Prophecy may, in fact, be “the canary in the coal mine” – if we listen.

 

 

            One of the seldom-mentioned fathers of the early church lived in Carthage – in Africa, across a narrow Mediterranean strait from Sicily. His name was Tertullian, and his works are studied by early church scholars.  He lived during the second and third Christian centuries.

 

            He is remembered today for his writings and his engagement with an early church heresy called “the New Prophecy” or Montanism.  But today I mention him because of a question he posed that raises a question for us today: “What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?”

 

            There are many layers to that question, and many reasons for it. For our purpose today, though, I raise it for this reason: “What has the prophet Hosea to do with us today?”

 

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            A good question for various reasons.

 

            What does a minor Jewish prophet from 3,000 years ago and half a world away have to say to us today?

 

            What does a prophet who lived in a marriage of infidelity have to tell us?

 

            Hosea is remembered in our Christian Bible as the first among the minor prophets – as opposed to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.  He is known as one of the 12.

 

            He lived and prophesied in the Northern Kingdom, Israel, after that kingdom parted ways with the Southern Kingdom, Judah.  He came after the heady days of the united monarchy, under David and Solomon.

 

            Israel -- as a separate kingdom -- was walking on thin ice.  Their royalty was folks like Ahab and Jezebel, whom we have heard about in recent weeks’ lessons.  The people had largely forsaken the god of the covenant, YHWH, and the Law which was to guide them and order their lives.  They had migrated to the indigenous gods of that land.  From a faith perspective, they were being unfaithful.

 

            Which is where Hosea comes in.  He uses an autobiographical method to describe Israel’s conflicted existence. He says he marries a woman named Gomer – a woman he knows to be unfaithful.  In the first lesson passage today, she gives him three children – two sons and a daughter.

 

            Their names describe the betrayal. 

 

God instructs him to name the first son. "Name him Jezreel; for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel."

 

            Soon, a daughter is born. God gives a name. "Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have pity on the house of Israel or forgive them. But I will have pity on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God; I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by war, or by horses, or by horsemen."

 

            The name of the second son contains a similar judgement.

 

            The analogy is potent and pointed.  Gomer has been unfaithful.  Israel has been unfaithful. Evil will befall succeeding generations.  That is the price to be paid for the people’s unfaithfulness.

 

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            I can’t help but wonder.  In light of this passage, what do I need to hear?  What do we need to hear? What do Hosea’s words have to say to us today?

 

            A thought: The General Confession we include within this service – the one we will say in just a few moments – is not what many of us think it is.  It is not a personal confession; it is a corporate confession – a confession of the community’s failures and shortcomings.  These are the words we say, our fessing up to sins as a body.

 

            The old confession noted “that we have erred and strayed like lost sheep.”  That seems a little more to the point. So, what do we need to hear from Hosea?  Would he prophesy to us in the same way he prophesied to Israel?

 

            Have other things in our lives… other idols, priorities, comforts, aspirations, goals, brass rings… replaced focus on the eternal one?

 

            I don’t have answers now. I wrestle with these questions.  I invite you to do the same.

  

Questions to Ponder

PROPERS:          PROPER 12, YEAR C  

TEXT:                COLOSSIANS 1:15-28; LUKE 10:38-42

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JULY 17, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        We proclaim a God that is the God of all creation.

 

            In 1953, an English evangelical named John Bertram Phillips published a book that was unlike others he had written.  He had been known as a biblical translator and had published several works of that type.

 

            But in 1953 he published something different – a book to address the world that emerged after World War II. The post-war world was more complex.  Would the old-time religion speak to the complexity?

 

            The book he published that year was entitled Your God is Too Small.  I assume it sought to speak to that more complex world, offering spiritual solutions for that new era.

 

            I think he could not begin to fathom the questions we have today.

 

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            This past week as I exercised at the Daphne YMCA, I did what I frequently do – I listened to a Fresh Air episode.  That is an NPR podcast that originates at the public radio station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

 

            The episode was from 2011, and it featured the physicist and mathematician Brian Greene, a professor at Columbia University.  He spoke about the complexity of creation, and the challenges posed by physics, as explained by Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and the relatively new developments associated with quantum physics.

 

            The two – physics and quantum physics – do not agree.  Physics tell us about how large bodies act in space, and quantum physics describe how the subatomic world functions.  But they conflict is significant ways.

 

            Brian Greene and other scholars are seeking a unified theory which will explain both.  It goes well beyond my ability to understand or explain. I do know, however, that what the James Webb space telescope is showing us puts this subject on the front burner.

 

            Brian Greene was seeking to explain possible ways of viewing creation. He spoke of a multiverse, and various theories about that very complex subject.  He likened our universe to a loaf of bread, representing one slice in that loaf. But, he said, that there may be other universes – like other slices of bread – existing within the entirety of creation.

 

            Other worlds might exist at the same time and in the same space as ours. It boggles the mind. Like J.B. Phillips said, our God may be too small. As St. Paul wrote in his First Letter to the Corinthians, we see through a glass darkly.

 

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            St. Paul wrote more, too, this time to the Church in Colossae:

 

Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers-- all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

 

            The theories that I mention, but do not endorse, today challenge our understanding of the cosmos. Perhaps just like Copernicus or Galileo.  Today’s notions must seem radical to us.  We wonder like Nicodemus: “How can this be?”

 

            Well, like a story I heard from a law student at Ole Miss, “Maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t.” But we should be mindful of this: Jesus posed a whole new way of viewing the world. Jesus told Nicodemus that we “must be born again.” Paul proposed a radical notion about the roots of life. The apostle John proclaimed that God makes all things new. And what could be more radical than rising from the dead?

 

            Is our God too small?  Maybe the context in which we place God is, indeed, too small.  Whatever the truth about creation, we proclaim a God who created it, a God who sustains it, and a God who will ultimately bring it to completion.

 

            It behooves us to sit like Mary at the feet of the master, and be open to the new creation he brings.

  

A Higher Calling

PROPERS:          PROPER 10, YEAR C  

TEXT:                AMOS 7:7-17; LUKE 10:25-37

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JULY 10, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The divine spirit overrules the Law.    

 

            Laura Thatcher Ulrich was a little-known professor of history at Harvard University in the 1970s.  She was married to another professor and was a Mormon – thereby facing limits on her role as a woman, a wife, and a mother.

 

            In her teaching and scholarship, her area of focus was ordinary people – and the importance and impact those people had on the trajectory of history.  She wrote a book about such a woman – a Puritan midwife and healer in the 18^th century, who lived a routine life.  It was about that ordinary woman and was entitled “A Midwife’s Tale.”

 

            She won a coveted Pulitzer Prize for that book.  But it was a simple quotation from that book which brought much attention: “Well behaved women seldom make history.” It was meant to be an encouraging statement:  Well-behaved women should make history, but it doesn’t usually happen.

 

            The quotation, however, became a slogan among the growing movement of progressive women.  I have even seen on bumper stickers: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”  It is a battle cry that, in order to affect the course of history, you may have to break some dishes.  It’s like those sayings: “To make an omelet, you have to break some eggs” and “Sacred cows make the best hamburgers.”

 

            That interpretation of the quotation can be construed to be similar to the late Congressman and Civil Rights activist John Lewis’s admonition to “Make good trouble.”

 

            In other words, in order to do good, don’t be hamstrung by the rules, or the law.

 

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            That seems to be exactly the point Jesus is making this morning. In a conversation with the man I grew up knowing as the Rich Young Ruler, Jesus is asked “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

 

            In response, Jesus turns the table. “What do you think,” he asks.  The young man quotes the Summary of the Law: "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." Jesus tells him he has answered correctly.

 

            The man responds that he has done all those things since his youth. And he wants more… perhaps to bolster his self-assurance: “And who is my neighbor,” he asks.

 

            Jesus does what we call a paradigm shift.  He does not detail the Law.  He does not recount the Deuteronomic Code.  He tells a story.  We know it as the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

 

            You know the story.  It is familiar.  Like the young man and the Law, we have heard it since our youth.  The people who refused to help the wounded traveler – a priest and a Levite -- were both highly-esteemed in the community of faith.  They knew that the Law said they were to have nothing to do with this unclean, unidentified traveler. So, they took the other side of the road.

 

            But a Gentile… a goyim… a Samaritan… a foreigner, not one of the faithful, came by and cared for the man.  He took him to an inn and paid for his care.  He acted according to a higher good.

 

            In the first lesson, the prophet Amos spoke of a plumb line. – a plumb line that God had put over Israel.  He said that it had been placed among the people.  Some might point to the Law… or its essence… as that plumb line.

 

            But Jesus tells us, and the plumb line tells us, that there is a higher good that goes beyond the Law.  It is something that cuts through the flesh and marrow of human existence.  It is the divine spirit which should animate and guide our lives.

            It is the person of Jesus… and the essence of his teaching… which should motivate us and drive us toward doing the right thing.  Regardless of what the world… the Law… and others might say. 

Life on a Roller Coaster

 

PROPERS:          PROPER 9, YEAR C    

TEXT:                LUKE 10:1-11, 16-20

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JULY 3, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The path toward a New Creation is both immediate and slow – like justification and sanctification, and the creation of “a more perfect union.”  

 

            Two-hundred-forty-six years ago tomorrow, the Declaration of Independence was issued in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. July Fourth has been known as our Independence Day – freedom from the yoke of British governance.

 

            Just over 234 years ago, the Constitution of the United States was ratified.  Its Preamble included these words: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

 

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            “… in Order to form a more perfect Union…”

 

            On page 298 of the Book of Common Prayer, the rubric preceding the sacrament says that “Holy Baptism is the full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s body the Church.  The bond established by God in Baptism is indissoluble.”

 

            My question, then, is this: Why do we struggle so much as a nation and as people of faith?

 

            A bit of theology and perspective might help us understand.

 

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            Regarding our individual struggles as people of faith, I am reminded of the difference between justificationand sanctification.  They are each present and active factors in baptism.

 

            Justification is immediate.  We are “made right” in the eyes of God.  Your sins – both past and yet to come – are washed away.  You stand as New Beings in God’s creation.  You are a full member in the Household of God.

 

            Sanctification is another matter.  It begins in the sacrament of baptism, but it only begins then.  Your future life of growing in the grace you have received, in being formed more fully into a child of God, is a lifelong process.  It may be that very process of sanctification that brings you to the church today.  You seek to grow in the gift you have been given.

 

            Yet none of us reaches perfection. We are like this nation as we perpetually reach for the brass ring of perfection or a perfect union. It always eludes us.

 

            Paul Tillich, the 20^th century theologian, compared the perspectives on sanctification of the two great 16^thcentury reformers, John Calvin and Martin Luther.

 

            Calvin saw the process of sanctification as a gradual, constant, slow, upward movement toward holiness.  It could be compared to circular staircase, always ascending toward perfection, but never reaching it.

 

            Luther, on the other hand, saw a much more dynamic, unpredictable process of sanctification – perhaps like a roller coaster ride. Exhilarating highs as we reach the peaks, and devastating lows as we go into the depths. Still, the process continues as life goes on – up and down, high and low, being perfected and then falling short. But we do so within the context of having already been justified.

 

            We still reach for the brass ring.  It always eludes us. Yet we seek it.  Our holy mission continues. We strive, yet we never attain.

 

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            “… in Order to create a more perfect Union…”

 

            This is where perspective merges with theology.

 

            Two-hundred-forty-six years ago the people of this land began that journey. Two-hundred-thirty-four years ago we articulated that aspiration in our governing document.

 

            In all those years, we have seen amazing highs and challenging lows – much like a roller coaster ride.  The Civil War… the conquering of the West… the Great Depression… various national scandals… the 1960s… the struggle with Civil Rights… leaders with clay feet… debates about governance… It has been anything but an upward, always-ascending move toward a more perfect union.

 

            But the journey continues – both for us as people seeking to be sanctified and as a nation seeking to be a more perfect union.

 

            It has never been easy.  Jesus sent 70 of his followers out on the road in the gospel lesson today.  They were to carry his message to the people – some who would hear it; some who would not.

 

            The mission was not perfect.  The work was not finished.  But it was a beginning.