| August 23, 2009
You are welcome to reflect on this message
Sometimes a preacher preaches because it’s Sunday. But hopefully we preach because we get “a bee in our bonnet” and can’t wait to get it out. Something has been stalking me for months and I’ve taken my sweet time before I said anything about it. Long before our President this week blurred the lines between the separation of church and state, urging us to push his healthcare plan from the pulpit, inserting his agenda into the lectionary. I have enough difficulty understanding the nuances and intricacies of Baptist life to be promoting specific policies in areas for which I have no expertise. About that I will say this: everybody favors health care for our people. At issue is how we go about it.
So my “bee” may just be an insistent intuition, bound to suffer when it’s translated from feeling into preaching. I’ll state it simply: America has come under the judgment of God. I hesitate in saying that for resenting being cast in the mold of the doom brigade. But this is not date-setting-end-of-the-world-rapture stuff. It’s not the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last. I doubt few know what the year 722 BC has in common with Sept 2001. Assyria sacked Israel and Saudi Arabian terrorists attacked America. National trauma came to two nations that think of themselves not only as God’s people, but also exempt from God’s justice. And both were wrong!!
So what does divine judgment have to do with American unrest? I’ll dispense with the “unrest” first. That our people are suffering from national instability is quite obvious, if the recent uproar in town halls about nationalized health care are any indication. A whole lot of people are angry and frustrated about expansive, intrusive “bigger-is-better” government; spiraling debt, and the Congressional sausage-factory’s magic elixir. The country is deeply divided over apparent unfairness of a lot of proposals. And nothing we try seems to work.
So belligerence has become the prevailing mood of the land. Mistrust and suspicion are rampant. Citizens and Representatives talk past each other, and walk out of scheduled meetings. Others resort to violence either to guard what they have, or to get what they want. This country’s in a big mess and “unrest” may be too mild. You’ve heard the stock curative rationalizations: the population has exploded. Ipods and blackberry texting have whisked us out of the familiar; terrorism, no matter what you call it, is real. Our institutions, meant to serve have become fossilized and only contribute to the problem.
Proposed solutions include more education, accept change, eliminate the terrorists from a position of justice, rather than letting them out of prison in weakness. And always throwing money at it, seems to do it. But it only gets worse and no cure over the horizon. While we’re grabbing at straws, let me offer another interpretation why all this has come down upon us. It’s more to the point than the others. Simply put: I think we’re suffering because of our sins. I say that because I believe in God.
Our society tries to break down religious experience into something less than mystery, something we can manage and control. And we’re paying the price of our moral failure, acting with impunity, mis-treating God’s creation and God’s children. How can we not factor into this complex, disappointing situation in which we find ourselves -- that maybe it has something to do with God’s intentions and our disobedience. I expect this would be laughed-at on college campuses, where the elitist mentality is driven to find a rational narrative for everything. But I don’t know how anybody familiar with the scriptures can not see it. I’m not suggesting we ignore the usual considerations. They’re indeed real. But they aren’t the only forces at work in history. The Bible has a lot of common sense, especially in Galatians 6:6-7, where St. Paul said “We reap what we sow.” We’ve ignored that to our detriment, I believe. It starts off with “Be not deceived.” Have no illusions, “God is not mocked.” Try sinning for too long, and eventually God shows up as judge. And judgment happens within history, not just at the end of history. And it happens to God’s people as much or more than those who are not.
I find it striking that Jesus never spoke ill of any other religion. Rather he reserved his stiffest words, and severest criticism for his own religion, his own people and especially his disciples. Judgment begins in the house of God. Which makes one of the skills of belonging to God being able to endure the critique of God upon us. I have lately come to doubt that we have what it takes. Our faith in God is what makes us believe what ought to be can be. So even in these difficult days, we continue to believe in moral causes and invest in them. It’s as if God read Dr. Spock, and its OK to be permissive. Anything goes as long as I get mine. Avarice, lust, hate, vengeance, indifference, demonizing the opposition are unfortunate behaviors that are “evil” but not sin; it’s more about the times rather than the human heart. But there’s this inconvenient “reaping what you sow” stuff.
This is unfamiliar territory for me. I fancy myself as a grace preacher. Perhaps as a reaction to my Southern religious up-bringing I’ve come down hard on getting folks to recognize and respond to mercy. Consequently I never taught myself or my congregations how to recognize or respond to judgment. But I need to make up for that. What does judgment look like? How do we know it when it comes? Biblical judgment is visited upon us in many ways. In Noah’s time, it came in the form of a flood - physical destruction. In 8th century BC Israel, judgment came in the form of deportation, and assimilation. God even called Cyrus a pagan king, “the messiah,” when his own people couldn’t fit the bill!
The scriptural model that coincides with our current context is the story in Genesis about the “Tower of Babel.” The mythical saga about people determined to build a tower that reached to the sky. But there are no outside hordes, no barbarism, nobody taken captive into exile. Judgment in the Book of Genesis looks like arrogant, sinful pride. Like us, they ended up totally confounded. The inability to communicate left them severely divided. Sound familiar? Like yesterday’s front page headlines.
In the Gospel of John, judgment looks like light shining on our darkness. Our modern attitude is like Pilate sitting in judgment of Jesus (John 3:19). Judgment isn’t being sentenced or punished, it is getting showed-up by the light. It’s “reaping what we’ve sown.” Our unrest is self-caused and testifies to the discord brought on by our God-flauting, man-centered, money-grubbing, sclerotic bureaucracy.
In 1741 at Enfield, CT revivalist preacher Jonathan Edwards scorched his listeners in a sermon: “Sinners in the hands of an angry God,” while dangling a spider on a string over a candle light, as women fainted, men clung to the pillars. That’s the trouble with lesser ideas of judgment, that are not redemptive. These are dark days but we only know that because of the light. Light shines not only on our sins but also our possibilities. The light that judges us also saves us. You can’t get one side of Jesus without the other. Maybe Jesus can be to us what he was to Peter. The first time he faced Jesus he stood judged, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man.” But Jesus saw something else in Peter, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Jeremiah wasn't just "a bullfrog, who had some mighty fine wine!" But a prophet with a sensitive heart, and a love for his people. But he didn’t know what to say when God posed a pointed question to him: “Shall I not punish them for these things? Shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?” But that was Israel. We’re Americans. Does anybody here not think it’s possible for any people, with a lofty self-image, to eventually exhaust the patience of the Almighty and be left to the consequences of their sins?
Our greed has finally caught up with us. Our tolerance of perversion and promiscuity has come home to roost. God is the last thing we want. It would severely cramp our hedonistic lifestyle. How inconvenient to be expected to “do justly, love kindness and walk humbly” with God. You have to wonder how long any nation can continue to exist with such rottenness of heart. Vested interests calling porn “art,” defining vice as a virtue. Glorifying “Woodstock” after 40 years of mosh pits, psychedelic escapism, and unbounded debauchery. They tried that in Sodom, and we see where that got ‘em!
Meaningful life cannot survive without God. I can get along fine without a car or a plane; live on a dollar a day if I have to. Jesus talked about “abundant life,” because God knows life without an aim or sense of direction other than making money, using people, getting high is not quality life. Our elected leaders spending money we don’t have, on things we don’t need. The media assaults us nightly in a war for our minds. We’re “reaping what we’ve sown.” Judgment looks like a blunt wake-up call. We‘re facing an infinite variety of troubles that only get worse, because for a long time now we’ve been “asking for it.”
Israel had a another prophet who said that a lot. Amos of Tekoa, our maddest preacher. He was in a bad mood too, scalding God’s people (Amos 8:4-12) because of the unjust society they created. When the health of the market is a higher good than the health of the people, it’s so repugnant that God can’t stand it anymore. It’s in the same category as “taking the Lord’s name in vain.” Amos blessed ‘em all out, and then ticked off a list of the different ways God tried to get their attention: famine, drought, blight, locusts. And when none of that worked, then came illness, sudden death, and political upheaval. But his rant is so harsh it’s easy to ignore. When the nation’s business is to stay in business, God casts this sober scenario about “the sun going down at noon, and him moving someplace else to live.” And he quit going to church! That’s what judgment looks like in the Book of Amos.
Sooner of later we’ll get tired of “reaping what we sow.” Then what? The first thing we can do is to stop acting like we had nothing to do with our situation. If we admitted we’re all in this pressure-cooker together, maybe we’d lighten up on each other and quit being short-fused and irritable. Next we can be wary of any propaganda that tries to justify either ourselves or our nation. Even if it’s wrapped in the flag or the Bible. And if we had the guts to repent, we’d realize it’s not just judgment we’re under, but DIVINE judgment. This is our hope. God’s last word is always grace. God’s judgment isn’t wrathful as much as turning us over to our own freedom of choice. It isn’t vindictive but restorative. It always moves in the direction of forgiveness and reconciliation. Just as our unrest stems from divine judgment, so our rest is to be found in divine grace.
With the nation in a devastating war, our president noted that both sides prayed to the same God, allowing as how neither prayers could be fully answered. He viewed the terrible war as the judgment of God on our country, stating that "The Almighty has His own purposes." Then he quotes the gentle Jesus, meek and mild and all that, in Matthew 18:7 “Woe unto the world because of its offenses!" But our greatest president ended perhaps the best speech ever delivered before the days of monitors, like this: "With malice toward none; and charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we’re in; to bind up the nation's wounds..." I don't know how it can be said any better than that.
Providence Prayers: (8/23/09)
Grant us the capacity to be possessed by something worth serving. As we strive for ways to keep our footing in a slippery time, we pray for insight in dealing with mankind’s greatest problem: trying to gain the world but not lose our souls. For thinking we can get away with it and have both at once. Refusing to acknowledge the way Thou hast set the world on its course: “we reap what we sow. Sow to the wind, reap the whirlwind. Sow to the Spirit, reap life abundant.” For too long have we been driven by sensuality, getting high and a love for money that no member of a striped chain-gang can be a more helpless prisoner.
Remind us in this worship that the greatest hope for the trials of our time is a spiritual renewal in the life of our people, most of whom have little regard for the church and for too long believed we can clean the water in the well by painting the pump. But real change comes for renewal from the depths. No society is ever redeemed by external adjustments alone. Because the deepest trouble lies on the inside of us. So we pray the noble prayer of the Psalmist: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” We offer these our prayers in faith, fully aware that Thou art just in all Thy ways. Through Christ our Lord....Selah! Back |
