Scriptural Sermons

Pharaoh, King of Egypt, enslaved the People of Israel. It was not out, as you might assume, out of cruelty. It was, rather, out of judiciousness. The People of Israel were not Egyptians. They were foreigners. They were the rough equivalent of what we today would call the undocumented. So now as then they were deemed to be threats. Add to this that the People of Israel grew increasingly numerous, as numerous even as the Egyptians themselves. This intensified the threat. In those numbers they could simply take over. Or Egypt’s enemies could induce them to fight for them, as a kind of built in fifth column. Pharaoh, King of Egypt, had to act. And so he enslaved the People of Israel. It was the judicious thing to do. But his judiciousness was not rewarded. In slavery, unpredictably, their numbers only increased. Pharaoh’s patience with the People of Israel grew thin. Judiciousness then crossed over to cruelty. He ordered the Hebrew midwives to murder the infant boys as they delivered them. That would thin their ranks. But the Hebrew midwives refused to do so, and with their refusal, civil disobedience was born. They chose to heed God not man. But Pharaoh King of Egypt was not so easily undone. He ordered his army to search out the infant boys and throw them into the Nile. Thereafter, cruelty no doubt took on a life of its own. Pharaoh King of Egypt rightly ranks with the likes of Caligula, Nero, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. One wonders why it is that so many who rise to power become murderous and maniacal tyrants. The human cost - the suffering and misery and despair and tragedy -- are unimaginable and incalculable. Against this backdrop, a woman from the house of Levi gave birth to a healthy and beautiful infant boy. It would normally be the occasion for celebration and joy, but it was for her the occasion for anguish. When a child is born, a mother’s first instinct is protectiveness. But how could she possibly protect him? She thought desperately at first that she could hide him, and she did so for several months, but that could not go on forever. He could any day be discovered. The lesser of two evils was to abandon him to his fate. So she plastered a reed basket with bitumen and pitch, and she cast her hope upon the water. Low and behold, the daughter of Pharaoh happened upon the basket. She peered into it, beheld the crying infant, and she had compassion. The daughter of Pharaoh has never received the appreciation and respect she deserves. She is, inexplicably, overlooked. What she did was exemplary. Normally when people enslave others, they find justification for it. The enslaved are not deemed the equal of their enslavers. They are deemed subhuman. Slavery, therefore, is a necessity. More than this, it is morally right. That’s what the South advanced in this country, after all. But the daughter of Pharaoh did not fall prey to justification. She had compassion. And she acted upon that compassion. Here is an important reminder. It is not enough to have compassion. To have compassion, or any other altruistic emotion for that matter, does not make you a good person. You must act upon it. If you have compassion and you do not act upon it, that makes you decidedly less than a good person. As Martin Luther King, Jr. famously declared, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” And here is something truly astounding. Her act was to adopt him. That was, to say at the least, a courageous thing to do. It certainly would not have put her in good stead with her father. I can just imagine it. “Father, I have a surprise for you. You have a new grandson.” Such an announcement could only have dumbfounded him, but his confusion would have given way to horror as she went on, “I have adopted an infant boy from among your slaves.” If nothing else, we can now set the record straight. We can give Pharaoh’s daughter the appreciation and respect that she deserves. But we can do more than that. As I said, she is exemplary, and so we can follow her example. We can show compassion to those who have cast their hope upon the water. Yes, a mother forced by dire circumstance to give her child up for adoption, hoping that her child will be loved and cherished. But too, one with an atypical identity, hoping to be accepted for who he or she really is. One of a different race, creed, or income level seeking to relocate, hoping not that she will be welcomed, for that would be too high a hope; but hoping she will be at least be tolerated. One who has transgressed, hoping he will be forgiven. One who has something difficult to impart, hoping she will be understood. We can show compassion for those who have cast their hope upon the water. For someone greater, much greater than Pharaoh’s daughter did the same. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us!” “My daughter has just died. Come and lay your hand on her, that she may live.” “Even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” “Jesus, come before my son dies.” “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David, for my daughter is tormented by a demon.” “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers terribly.” “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” They cast their hope on him. And he showed compassion for them all. And when we cast our hope on him, he will show compassion for us -- unlimited even by a cross. Amen.

I attended a funeral recently. It was for my high school math teacher. He was one great guy. Everyone loved him. He taught math at my high school for forty years, and he also coached wrestling. By the time he retired, he had become something of a legend in his own time. The funeral was upbeat, not like so many funerals that are so very sad. He lived a full and long life, and we gathered to celebrate that. But for one man – a classmate of mine who wrestled for him. He was absolutely devastated. I approached him in the parking lot after the funeral and asked if he was okay. He broke down. “That man was everything to me,” he said. “I was O.K. so long as he was in the world.” Then he shared his story. His mother died when he was very young. His father was a physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic. By the time he was in high school, he was far down a bad road. He hadn’t the support to do well at school, so he didn’t. He was very angry, so he was a behavior problem. The only friends he could make were kids like himself, so he hung out with a tough crowd. And he had begun to dabble in drugs. He was pretty much a lost cause at the age of sixteen. Enter my math teacher. He approached him one day out of the blue and told him he could tell by his gait that he was born to wrestle. This could only have been a ruse to intervene. Even I, who knows nothing about wrestling, am suspicious that you can identify one born to wrestle by his gait. At any rate, the ruse worked. He intervened. And he made him into a great wrestler. On top of that, he made him into a great young man. His advice, understanding, and support were unwavering. He helped him to deal with his past in such a way that it didn’t destroy him. He filled his present with new found responsibility, purpose, structure, and discipline. And he paved his way to a future. After graduation he went to college on a wrestling scholarship and eventually became a doctor. “I feel so lost,” he concluded his story. “What am I going to do now?” While he was sharing his story, I could not help but think how hard life can be. We here are generally prosperous and privileged, so we can afford to put up a front. But behind that front life can be hard. Because it’s out there -- loss, abuse, addiction, and a host of other afflictions. It’s enough to make you lose your way. And as I said, we here are generally prosperous and privileged. What if the loss, abuse, and addiction are compounded by poverty or racism? Then it’s all but a foregone conclusion. Your way is lost. Yes, life can be hard. Life takes casualties. Lots of them. It can make us feel helpless and overwhelmed. We want to make things better, but what could we possibly do? The answer is no farther away than my late math teacher. What could we possibly do to make things better? We could reach out, like he did. And what is in view here is not merely a good example, although we must never underestimate the power of a good example and must always strive to be one. But there’s more in view than that. It has to do with the Bible. The Bible may seem like a forbidding book. For one thing it’s thousands of pages long. It makes War and Peace look like a short story. For another thing, it’s unimaginably ancient. The Bible’s story begins 2,000 years before the Common Era. I just read that a sizable portion of millennials don’t know what the Holocaust was. To them that’s ancient history - a mere 75 years back. The Bible is more than 4,000 years back. That’s unimaginably ancient. For yet another thing, it traffics in extremely complicated and sophisticated theology, plumbing in its unfolding the depths of such mysteries as our nature, the predicament that our nature has landed us in, and the means of our redemption. And it does so all the while purging itself of false starts or conclusions. So it may seem forbidding. But at the same time, ironically, the Bible lends itself to succinct summaries. Here’s one: God lives. Here’s another: Good triumphs over evil. And another: Love triumphs over fear. And another: Practice universal justice. And another: Love one another. And here’s one that’s right on point: Reach out. The Bible can be summarized in just two words. Reach out. Think about it. That’s what God did. God reached out. God reached out to Abraham and told him that from him would one day issue a nation, and not just any nation, but a nation that would somehow bless all the nations by bestowing upon them redemption. God reached out to Moses and bequeathed him an ethical law so that God’s people could bear his righteousness. God reached out to David and told him that from his descendants would emerge one who would embody that redemption. And that one in the fullness of time emerged. God reach out to his son. He told him that if he would make a great sacrifice, the greatest sacrifice, it would be the means for all people to reach out to one another. In a real way. A way that advanced God’s own being and cause. And his son made that sacrifice. And in his brief ministry that preceded that sacrifice, he reached out to everyone. And I mean everyone. Lepers. Prostitutes. Beggars. Even a bitter little man perched up in a sycamore tree. So reaching out is not just a good example. It is nothing less the mechanism that God that employs to bestow redemption. Yes, life can be hard. Paul knew this. “We would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” But Paul goes on. “So we must make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.” And this means reaching out. “I feel so lost now. What am I going to do?” asked my grieving classmate. I told him that his coach had already showed him what to do. I told him to reach out. Amen.

As a pastor, I get asked quite a bit about the meaning of the cross. It’s a hard question. My father, who was a pastor before me and who is buried in these sacred grounds, devoted his whole life to the question. He tried to write a book about it, but he could never finish it. It was a hard question for him too, and he was a brilliant man. In fact, it has been a hard question for the Christian Church. The Christian Church down through the centuries has come up with four separate theories about the meaning of the cross, but all of them have holes in them. Even C.S. Lewis, when pressed on the question said that we Christians aren’t exactly sure how the cross works, but we’re just sure that it does. I think about the meaning of the cross a lot - when I wake up in the middle of the night; when I am out for a walk; when I feel the weight of my own sin. This much I think I can say for sure. Jesus bore his cross as a willing sacrifice. The New Testament makes that crystal clear. Jesus bore his cross as a willing sacrifice. He knew how badly he would suffer. The Romans made sure everyone knew that. He did it anyway. And there’s the thing. It would make no sense at all that he did if Jesus did not have faith in the ultimate goodness of being. So in a strange and mysterious and paradoxical way, you could even say that on the cross Jesus testified to the ultimate goodness of being. And he was vindicated. God resurrected him. The result was that God’s cause was advanced in history in a way it never was before and never will be again. Today is Memorial Day Sunday. We are called to remember and honor all of the soldiers who died on the field of battle. I am a student of World War II. I have been studying it pretty much my whole life. I will take it any way I can get it - histories, documentaries, biographies. There have been some fine dramatizations of it. My favorite is the miniseries Band of Brothers. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. I warn you though it’s very vivid. So vivid that I can’t watch parts of it. I have to cover my eyes. The toughest scenes to watch were of the fighting at Normandy, fighting done by men who were still boys, really - 18, 19 years old. They bore the brunt of a world war. And what I can’t even watch they had to live. If you think about it, those soldiers had something in common with Jesus. They made a willing sacrifice. And the suffered too, boy did they ever suffer. But it didn’t stop them. Though again, it would make no sense at all if they didn’t have faith in the ultimate goodness of being, and the reality and worth of freedom and equality and just peace. And the result, again, was that God’s cause was advanced in history. This makes those soldiers nothing less than Christ figures. Now they may not have believed as we believe. But it really doesn’t matter. God works through his own people to be sure, but he works too through people who are not his own. Think of Ruth the Moabite. Think of Cyrus of Persian. Think of the Roman Centurion. Think of the Samaritan or the Syro-Phoenician woman. Willing sacrifices made in faith in the ultimate goodness of being. It would appear to be the very mechanism of redemption. And friends, this all has application for us, if we want to be even remotely worthy of them. We are now called to make willing sacrifices in faith in the ultimate goodness of being in advancement of God’s cause in history. This means we don’t get to live lives of ease or complacency or aimlessness. This means we don’t get to hoard our time and resources. This means we don't get to take shortcuts through life, short cuts that, ironically, get us nowhere. All of that needs to be sacrificed. Instead we, need to enact our belief in the primacy of justice, the primacy of peace, the primacy of truth ,and above all the primacy of love. No matter what it costs us. Moses was dying. So he gathered the people around him. What were his dying words? What did he tell them? He told them that each and every day they had a choice. They could choose the way of blessing, or they could choose the way of curse. That's our choice too each and every day. We can choose the way of curse. We can deny the ultimate goodness of being and find no higher meaning than selfishness and hatred and cynicism and suspicion and fear, and in so doing make everything we touch all that much worse, or we can affirm the ultimate goodness of being and find higher meaning in everything, in every breath we take, and in so doing make everything we touch all that much better. Each and every day it’s our choice. Let us pray to God that our choice honors him, his son, and the fallen soldiers we gather here to remember. Amen.

“Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Paul’s right about one thing. God has made foolish the wisdom of the world. Put another way, there’s no such thing as the wisdom of the world. The wisdom of the world is then an oxymoron. How about the wisdom of the world that youth and beauty are to be prized and pursued at all costs? Really? Then why is it that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, “had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him?” Or how about the wisdom of the world that wealth proclaims status and worth? Really? Then why is it that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born in a stable and was buried in a borrowed tomb? Or how about the wisdom of the world to look out for number one? Really? Then why is it that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, “gave himself up for us as….a sacrifice to God.” The lesson here, obviously, is that we should not accept the wisdom of the world as the gospel truth. Just the opposite, we should be suspicious of it. We should question it, assess it, judge it, and, by and large, reject it. Nowhere is this more true than with regard to the wisdom of the world that responsibility is a bad thing. “Responsibility? The less of it the better!” This is what the wisdom of the world would have us believe -- that responsibility is for chumps and drudges, and the cleverest among us have escaped it. They are sipping margaritas from dawn till dusk on a tropical beach without a care in the world. God has definitely made foolish this wisdom of the world...at least according to the Word of God. There are certain things that the Bible consistently condemns. One is hypocrisy. Another is hardness of heart. And another is complacency -- complacency -- being excessively at ease. If you think about it, complacency is the opposite of responsibility. Consider this morning’s Old Testament lesson. The prophet Amos was addressing himself to a society just like ours -- a prosperous society that was afflicted by social injustice. In Amos’ day, as in ours, there were the haves, and there were the have nots. The have nots were defenseless, resourceless, and vulnerable, so they fell prey to social injustice. For example, in Amos’s day there was an institution called debtor prison. If the have nots found themselves in debt, which was often, their debtors could march them to debtor prison. The jailer would pay off their debt, and the have nots would then work off their debt to the jailer in debtor prison. Naturally such an institution was in no way regulated, so abuse was prevalent and egregious. For the smallest of debts, the present day equivalent of a few dollars, the have nots would remain in prison for years, in conditions you don’t want to hear about; but you could say that debtor prison made Alcatraz look like the Four Seasons. Often whole families were incarcerated. If this isn’t social injustice, then I don’t know what is. And what was the response of the haves? They had no response. They passed the debtor prison day by day on the way to shops or social events. So they knew it was there. Still, they had no response. This is because they were complacent. In Amos’ words, “they lounged on beds of ivory, sang idle songs on their harps, anointed themselves with the finest oils, and drank wine from bowls.” They took no responsibility for debtor prison or anything else for that matter. Amos blasted them for it as only Amos could. No, the Bible doesn’t think much of complacency. It thinks much of responsibility. It’s heroes evince as much. God called to Abraham and told him to leave his country and his kindred and his father’s house and venture to a new land. What if Abraham had said no; said that he was at ease in his country and kindred and father’s house? But instead, Abraham took responsibility. He ventured to a new land. God called to Moses and told him to leave off his life in Midian and return to Egypt to rescue his fellow Israelites from slavery. What if Moses said no, that he was at ease in his life in Midian? But instead, Moses took responsibility. He returned to Egypt and rescued his fellow Israelites from slavery. God called to David and told him to leave behind his flocks and to forge the nation of Israel. What if David said no, that he was at ease following his flocks? But instead, David took responsibility. He forged the nation of Israel, forged its capitol Jerusalem to boot. Where would we be if the Bible’s heroes evinced complacency instead of responsibility? I am not sure, but it would not be a good place. I don’t even want to think about it. We could even remove these considerations from the Bible entirely. Where would be if surgeons did not take the responsibility to acquire and execute highly sophisticated skills in order to save lives? Where would we be if the military and police did not take the responsibility to keep us safe? Where would we be if explorers of all kinds did not take the responsibility to broaden our horizons? Again, I am not sure, but it would not be a good place. I don’t even want to think about it. What good there is in our society has been through people who have taken responsibility. And beyond that, responsibility is good too for the individuals who take it. This is because it is through responsibility that individuals find the meaning they do in life. This is as true as a mathematical equation. Say you take the responsibility to care for an elderly parent. The meaning you find in life will correlate to that. Say you take the responsibility to rescue or advocate for animals. The meaning you find in life will correlate to that. Say you take the responsibility to agitate for social improvement and progress. The meaning you find in life will correlate to that. Responsibility and meaning. The two go hand and hand. And another thing is true. The more responsibility you take, the more meaning you will find. That too is simple math. But returning to the Bible, one more thing is true. If you take divine responsibility, you will find divine meaning. That brings us to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He assumed the most divine responsibility and found the most divine meaning, for he assumed divine responsibility for human sin and found divine meaning in human redemption. With him as our guide let us forswear the wisdom of the world, and embrace responsibility. Amen.

“Then Pashur struck the prophet Jeremiah and put him in the stocks that were in the upper Benjamin Gate of the House of the Lord.” This morning’s Old Testament lesson would seem to indicate that the prophet Jeremiah was not well received. Indeed, such was the case. The prophet Jeremiah was not well received. In fact, that is putting it mildly. The prophet Jeremiah was not only beaten and set in stocks by the priest Pashur. He was thrown into a muddy cistern. And when I say muddy, he sunk up to his waist. There he was left for dead. He came within a hair’s breadth of being lynched by an angry mob. Even his own family conspired to kill him. And these were just the physical assaults. There too was the derision. The king himself flouted him publicly in the most egregious way. The people jeered at him whenever he passed. Yes, to put it mildly, the prophet Jeremiah was not well received. This is because the prophet Jeremiah made an unpopular demand upon Israel. He demanded that Israel integrate belief with practice or face the judgment of God. And to make matters worse, he made the demand by exposing, accusing, and threatening, and in the most angry and denunciatory terms. Here is but a small and, believe it or not, relatively mild dose of the man; this to those who gathered at the Temple for worship: “Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah, you that enter these gates to worship…Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend you ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’ For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood… and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place….. But there you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods…and then come and stand before me in this house which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are safe!’ – only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I am watching, says the Lord. God now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.” Shiloh, of course, had once been Israel’s central shrine until it was destroyed by the Philistines. Exposure, accusation, and threat in the most angry and denunciatory terms, but at the same time the irrefutable truth. But Israel wasn’t having it, for essentially two reasons. For one, it was the prophet Jeremiah’s form. No one like exposure, accusation, and threat, especially in the most angry and denunciatory of terms. It is unpleasant. It is uncomfortable. It is offensive. And because it is, it became easy for Israel to view the prophet Jeremiah’s form as the problem and to overlook his content. And too, Israel, Israel believed at least, was not really so bad as all that. After all, Israel was God’s chosen people -- God, by the way, who was, “slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love…forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin….” Sure Israel had its warts and freckles, but who doesn’t? Compared to its pagan neighbors -- those uncouth, unclean, barbarians -- Israel was the most enlightened and advanced nation there was. Israel was as good as it gets. Why couldn’t the prophet Jeremiah see it that way -- as a cup half full scenario -- and keep his big mouth shut? Martin Luther King, Jr., for all the fanfare he now receives every January, was not well received either, and again, that is to put it mildly. It was for him about how it was for the prophet Jeremiah. As King himself described it, “Due to my involvement in the struggle for the freedom of my people, I have known very few quiet days in the last few years. I have been arrested five times and put in Alabama jails. My home has been bombed twice. A day seldom passes that my family and I are not the recipients of threats of death. I have been the victim of a near fatal stabbing. So in a real sense I have been battered by the storms of persecution. I must admit that at times I have felt that I could no longer bear such a heavy burden….” And too it was because King made the same unpopular demand upon America as the prophet Jeremiah had made upon Israel. King demanded that America integrate belief with practice or face the judgment of God. He demanded that the freedoms that inhered in the Constitution that declared all to be equal and that inhered in the Bible that declared all to be created in the image of God be afforded to African Americans. And King did not even expose, accuse, and threaten, at least not with the same anger and denunciation as the prophet Jeremiah. This was because standing between King and the prophet Jeremiah was Jesus Christ, who had shown that God’s cause was to be won by redemptive suffering. And so King substituted for anger and denunciation non-violent resistance – boycotts, marches, and sit-ins – through which he and the African American people indeed learned the way of redemptive suffering. But America, like Israel, wasn’t having it, again for the same two reasons that Israel wasn’t having it. It viewed the problem as King’s form and overlooked his content. They disliked his demonstrations. They were chaotic, dangerous, and frightening. What’s more, they were illegal. African Americans should just wait for the wheels of justice to turn, America declared, wait for the legislature and judiciary to act. They would have their equality in due time. King countered that unjust law was no law at all, and that the African American people had been waiting for 340 years. “I guess it is easy”, he wrote, “for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, ‘Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of twenty million Negroes smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society, when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that it is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky…when you have to concoct an answer to your five year old son asking in agonizing pathos: ‘Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”…When you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading white and colored, when your first name becomes boy, when your wife and mother are never given the respected title Mrs,…then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over…..” But America believed, grant King his eloquence, the larger problem was still his demonstrations. And what’s more, he needed to do something about that perspective. American wasn’t really as bad as all that. American believed itself too God’s chosen people, compared to its neighbors the most enlightened and advanced nation there was. It had, after all, fought a war to end slavery. America was as good as it gets. So why didn’t King see it that way, as a cup half full scenario, and keep his big mouth shut? But the reason that prophets, whether from Israel or America, don’t see it that way is because they see it through God’s eyes, God’s eyes that penetrate pretext and evasion, indifference and indolence, fear and weakness, eyes that will neither slumber of sleep until there is equality, freedom, and justice for all the people he created. Prophets are not well received, and they probably never will be, but history does have a way of vindicating them. Martin Luther King knew this. “One day the South will recognize its real heroes,” he wrote, “….They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman of Montgomery, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride the segregated buses….They will be the high school and college students….courageously and nonviolently sitting at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’s sake. One day the South will know…these children of God were standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage carrying our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.” King was dead right. History has vindicated them all. All this makes you wonder how we would have received King had we been a church in the separate but equal south of the fifties and sixties? Would we have overlooked his content for his form? Would we have believed that we really weren’t so bad, that we were as good as it gets? And it makes you wonder how we would receive a prophet today. Perhaps our prayer, as we honor Martin Luther King, Jr. should be that God raise up another prophet of social justice, so that we may prove that we stand ready to vindicate him. Amen.

My grandmother, God rest her soul, was an expert bargain hunter. That woman really knew how to pinch a penny. And expertise, in bargain hunting and everything else, requires years of experience, such that a thing becomes second nature. My grandmother over the years developed a seemingly innate sense of the precise value of a diamond in the rough. And her reputation preceded her. She had only to arrive at an estate sale or auction or garage sale, and the crowds parted and let her have her way. She always walked away with what she wanted at the price she wanted. No one could rival her. I like to think that in my own small way I am a chip off the old block. I like to think that I too am an expert bargain hunter. After all, I watched the master at work. I am always trolling for a steal. I even schedule my morning run around garbage pick-up days to potentiate the discovery of treasure discarded in the parkway. Of course,garbage is the ultimate bargain because it’s free. Last week then, I had to run to a discount store for a few “essential” necessities, and I made my usual pass down the clearance aisle. To my delight and excitement, last year’s swimming apparel was marked 75% off. I was in need of beach wraps for the girls for the upcoming season, and it seemed truly a case of “seek and you will find” because there were three of them - all one size fits all. At the sale price they were five dollars, and since I had the remains of of a gift card from the store, I only had to shell out two dollars for all three beach wraps. A fair day’s work, I congratulated myself. Yes, I was feeling good about my achievement until I got home and had the girls try on the “one size fits all” beach wraps. My girls, though they are the same age, happen to be very different sizes. One girl is on the tall side, one girl is on the short side, and one girl is of medium height, after the fashion of The Three Bears. The beach wrap for the girl on the tall side fit her like a sausage casing. It was so tight that within seconds she had laceration marks around her neck. The beach wrap for the girl on the short side, was, so to speak, swimming on her. It was so big on her that it formed a train behind her. Of course the beach wrap for the girls of medium height actually fit her, but she claimed it was “lame,” so my achievement was a bust, and I was out two dollars. I did learn one thing from the experience, however. I learned that one size does not fit all. One size may fit the majority, but one size does not fit all. And this applies to more than just clothing. In fact it applies to just about everything. It applies to the lifestyles we choose to adopt. It applies to the vocations and avocations we pursue. It applies to the way we configure our families. It applies to the company we keep. It applies to our fashion sense of lack thereof. It applies to the abodes we make our homes. It applies to the ways we enact our roles. It applies to if and how we create intimate partnerships. One size does not fit all. There is no one way to do and to be. But there’s a problem with this, and it has to do with the fact that one size fits the majority. The majority then often expects that because one size fits them, that it must fit the minority too. And so they exert pressure upon the minority to conform - to deny that they are different, to deny their individuality, to deny their uniqueness. The minority is then at risk of being driven to a place of self denial and self contradiction to prevent being maligned or marginalized. Personally it seems ridiculous that people should be pressured to be what they are not. And the ridiculousness becomes compounded when the Bible is conscripted to support what we can label the “one size fits all tyranny.” Because in fact, the Bible wants nothing to do with it. For one thing, look at the wide assortment of “sizes” of its characters: Ezekiel, who, in an era when long hair and beards were the style, shaved every hair off his head and face with his sword? And the Lord put him up to it. Or Hosea, who married a prostitute and embarked upon the quintessential non-traditional marriage? And again, the Lord put him up to it. Or Solomon, who took for himself a thousand foreign wives? And the Bible never faults him for it, only that he worshiped their foreign gods. And don’t get me started on Jesus of Nazareth. Suffice it to say that we worship him for his uniqueness. They’re simply not “one size fits all” kind of folks. But more to the point, the overall message of the Bible wants nothing to do with the ”one size fits all tyranny.” There are places in the Bible where its truth breaks agonized and clear. Proof texting - or choosing a sentence here or there from the Bible to support your own preconceived biases (and those biases are usually formed of hatred and fear) - is always bad. But at the same time, there are places in the Bible which really manages to capture its overall spirit. “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself,” would be such an example. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” would be another. And today's words from Jeremiah would be yet another. “This is the covenant I will make, says the Lord, I will put my law within them. I will write it on their hearts. “ Jeremiah envisions a new covenant between God and God’s people. A true covenant. The true covenant, a covenant written upon the hearts of believers. But the timing of Jeremiah’s words was beyond strange, because the nation that had once been Israel lay before him in ruins. And Israel had not thought of itself as just any nation. Israel had thought of itself as God’s nation. The nation of Israel had been the very axis of Israel’s faith. But Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, shed no tears at the ruin of the nation of Israel. He declared that the axis of Israel’s faith would now be what it should have been all along = the hearts of believers. What Jeremiah was saying was that the nation of Israel should never have been the axis of Israel’s faith in the first place. Nor should that axis have been any preexisting majority of any kind, - whether it be the nation, whether it be race, whether it be ethnicity, whether it be orientation, lineage, or stature.. But solely the hearts of believers, wherever they came from, whatever they looked like, whoever they happened to be. This, Jeremiah was saying, would be how God would covenant with God’s people. This would hardly seem to buttress the “one size fits all tyranny.” As I said, the Bible wants nothing to do with it. Today is Mother’s Day, the day, obviously, on which we honor the institution of motherhood. And so, what application has all (or any) of this to the institution of motherhood? It has plenty. Too long, I think, we have held an idealized view of the institution of motherhood in ways that are sentimental or nostalgic or anachronistic. We have envisioned the ideal mother as Betty Crocker rolled into June Cleaver rolled into Laura Petrie - rather one size fits all. But whenever there exists a one size fits all mentality, there is too the threat of the "one size fits all tyranny.” Let us turn again to the biblical character to see if the mothers of the Bible fit this mold? There are the mothers of Bethlehem who wept inconsolably as Roman soldiers massacred their infant sons. There is Elizabeth who struggled with infertility her entire life until she was finally granted a son in her old age, a son she would live long enough to see beheaded. There is Hagar who along her her son Ishmael were driven from their home into the desert where Hagar begged God that she not be forced to witness her son die from thirst. And of course, there is Mary, a poor teenager who found herself pregnant, and who came to learn that the son she bore would be lost to her for the sake of the redemption of humankind. Hardly one size fits all. And let us turn too to the axiom that we may derive from the Bible’s overall message, that relationships must take root not from any preexisting majority, but between sympathetic hearts of individuals. And let then reconsider the institution of motherhood - set the ideal against reality, so that we may honor the woman who is raising children by herself, the woman who has been forcefully separated from her children by the law of the land, the woman who balances and juggles her vocational calling with the demands of child rearing, the woman unable to conceive who becomes a surrogate mother to the children in her sphere, the woman whose children have moved on and left her with a hole in her heart, the woman who exigency drove to give her child up for adoption, the woman who adopted that child, the woman who has lost a child, the woman who is raising her children's children. And yes, too, Betty Crocker and June Cleaver and Laura Petie as well. The point is, on Mother’s Day, we are called to honor all women who are possessed of a mother’s heart, and that depth of love that can only spring form the source of all love -- the God of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Snowflakes. If you aren’t connected to a college campus, you probably think that a snowflake is a tiny crystal of snow. If you are connected to a college campus, however, this word takes on new meaning. Snowflakes are students who are as fragile as their namesake. More particularly, Snowflakes are readily traumatized and offended. If a subject is raised, for instance, that involves exploitation, oppression, persecution, discrimination, suffering, violence, or any ism, Snowflakes meltdown. And that brings us to another word. Trigger. If you aren’t connected to a college campus, you probably think that a Trigger is the mechanism that fires a gun. If you are connected to a college campus, however, this word too takes on new meaning. The meaning relates to Snowflakes. If a professor must raise a subject involving exploitation, oppression, persecution, discrimination, suffering, violence, or any ism -- things that may trigger a Snowflake to meltdown -- they are urged to issue Trigger Warnings so the Snowflake may evacuate the classroom. In my own experience, Trigger Warnings are not feasible. I teach Bible, after all. Genesis to Revelation would issue in nothing but one unending Trigger Warning. After all, the Bible culminates in the crucifixion of the Son of God. But I would think that the same would hold true for most disciplines - certainly history, certainly literature, certainly biology, certainly psychology. At any rate, one of the leading public intellectuals of our times is a professor named Jordan B. Peterson. Peterson has become a well known spokesman against Snowflakes and Triggers. His point is that college is meant to prepare students for life, and you don’t prepare students for life by making them weak, cowardly, and avoidant. You don’t prepare them for life by giving them to believe that life is too much for them to handle. You don’t prepare them for life by over-protecting and sheltering them. You don’t prepare them for life by teaching them that the proper response to life is to run, hide, and cower. You prepare them for life by teaching them what life is, then by fortifying them with time tested convictions that are worth defending, by inspiring them with worthy examples, by encouraging them to assume responsibility for the burden of existence, and by warning them of the historical consequences of fear and ignorance. You prepare them for life by making them strong, courageous, and engaged. It all makes you wonder why students actually opt not to be rightly prepared in life. I guess the reasons that students opt not to be rightly prepared in life are the same as the reasons the rest of us opt not to be rightly prepared in life. It’s the course of least resistance. It is not easy to be rightly prepared in life. It’s downright hard to be rightly prepared in life, because it’s hard to do something as opposed to nothing. It’s hard to take action against an unrealized threat. It’s hard to forswear denial for realism. It’s hard to assume personal responsibility as opposed to relying upon others who have done so. We opt not to be rightly prepared in life, in short, because it is easy. But as Jesus teaches, “The way is easy that leads to destruction.” Because the bottom line is that bad things happen in life. Even privileged people like ourselves are not exempt. Bad things happen in life, and they happen in every way possible. They can happen to us as individuals; suddenly -- like a diagnosis, or an accident, or an attack. Or they can happen to us as individuals slowly -- like a toxic relationship, or a long and lonely end stage of life, or a debilitating condition. Bad things can happen to us as individuals both suddenly and slowly; and they can also happen to us as collective people, again suddenly, like 9/11 or slowly, like climate change. Bad things can happen every which way. And if this doesn’t ring true, just wait. Noah from our gospel lesson is proof of this. In fact, Noah is proof that it can be all of these things at once. The flood would happen to him and his family, and the flood would happen to all humankind. The flood would happen as spontaneously as storms do, but at the same time it would be a long time in coming. Humankind was riding for a fall. After all, “The LORD saw...that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil continually.” The Lord does not let this magnitude of evil stand. It may have its day, but its day ceases to be. The Lord issues his judgment upon it. He always has, and he always will. But Noah was prepared rightly for life. He was prepared for the flood. Yes, it was hard. It would have been easier not to build an ark. It would have been easier not to stock it. That’s what the rest of the world did, after all. But Noah was prepared rightly for life, and he sailed through the flood, and in the process saved humankind from extinction. But here is the punchline for the first Sunday in Advent. “So it will be with the coming of the Son of Man. So it will be with the coming of the Son of Man.” As the Son of Man came, the Son of Man will come. He will come to each of us, and he will come to all of us. He will come as he has portended, and he will come in the blink of an eye. Our gospel lesson orders us with great urgency to prepare for the coming of the Son of Man. And you think preparing rightly for life is hard? As hard as it is to prepare rightly for life, it is infinitely harder to prepare rightly for eternal life. Because this means that amidst the reality of life we must too demonstrate faith and righteousness, mercy and forgiveness; self-sacrifice, truthfulness, justice, peace, and for this first Sunday in Advent we too must demonstrate hope. We must be people he will recognize as his own. Amen.

As my children can and will attest, I am really bad at parking. I am not sure why. For some reason, for all of my life, I have never been able to park a car. I certainly can’t parallel park. That requires the most skill. Even if I were driving a Volkswagen Beetle, I would never attempt it. That leaves perpendicular and angle parking at which I am equally bad. My children hate it when I try to park, which is about ten times a day. “Am I going to hit anything? Am I in the space?” I ask them, my voice choked with urgency and stress. My friends hate it when I try to park too. A neighbor and I recently arranged to share a bottle of wine at a local wine boutique. I told her I’d pick her up at 7:00. “No! No!” She insisted. “I’d be happy to drive. Or we could walk.” She offered. “Is it my parking?” I asked. “Yes.” She said. “Is it really that bad?” I asked. “Yes.” She said. Last week I learned that at least I am not alone in the world. I was walking through a parking lot. I do a lot of walking through parking lots, since I always park far from the store where there are no other cars. Anyway, I was walking through a parking lot, when I discovered a car parked in such a way that it took up four parking spaces. A quarter of the car was in each of the four spaces. It was the worst parking job I had ever seen in my life. I waited around for a bit hoping to chalk up a friendship with the driver. No one showed up. “Oh well,” I said to myself as I made my way to the store, “At least I’m not that bad.” I found them to be consoling words. “At least I’m not that bad.” When we consider the prophet Jonah from our Old Testament Lesson, we can all say, “At least we’re not that bad.” Because Jonah was the worst. You can’t be as bad as the worst. It’s grammatically impossible. The Lord called Jonah to prophecy to the Assyrians. Now many of the prophets when the Lord called them to prophecy expressed reservations. Jeremiah springs to mind. “But I’m only a lad,” he protested. Moses springs to mind. “Who am I to go to Pharaoh?” he protested. Hosea springs to mind. “You want me to marry a prostitute?” He protested. But despite their reservations, they at least answered their calls and did the best they could. Not Jonah. Jonah would have none of it. He had two solid reasons. For one thing, the job of a prophet is not an easy job. Speaking the word of God. In this world? And if you’re any good at your job, it spells persecution, though Jonah didn’t have much to worry about on that score. For another thing, Jonah really hated the Assyrians. It’s pretty much what defined him - his hatred for the Assyrians. There are all sorts of people who are defined by their hatreds. Think of Neo Nazis. Think of the Klu Klux Klan. Think of the Skinheads. Such was Jonah’s hatred for the Assyrians. So he was not about to answer the Lord’s call and prophesy to the Assyrians, any more than a Neo Nazi would answer the Lord’s call and prophesy to the Jews. Jonah decided to get out of Dodge. Assyria was East, so he headed west. He hopped on board a cargo ship and was soon sleeping like a baby in the hold. His conscience, it would appear, was at complete rest. But God was not about to let him get away with him. God hurled a mighty storm his way. God calms storms, but he also sends them -- often to wake you up to something you must do, as in Jonah’s case. When his fellow mariners learned that the storm was on Jonah’s account, they threw him overboard. He should have drowned. Imagine being tossed into the waters of Hurricane Florence. Your chance of survival would be zero. But God, who is a God of unlimited resources, appointed a fish to swallow him and spit him out on dry ground. And God called him a second time to prophecy to the Assyrians. Considering who he was dealing with, God went easy on him. He had but one line to deliver, “Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Realizing he had no choice, Jonah held his nose and delivered his line. Lo and behold, the Assyrians repented. And I mean repented. To a man, woman, and child, they covered themselves in sackcloth. They fasted. They wailed. So God decided that Nineveh would not be overthrown. Then Jonah really showed his colors. His evasion of his call to prophecy was only the tip of the iceberg. He threw a temper tantrum. There’s nothing more unseemly than a grown man throwing a temper tantrum. I witnessed that recently as I was walking through a parking lot. It wasn’t pretty. “How dare you show grace and mercy to the Assyrians!” Jonah shook his fist at God. “How dare you be a God abounding in mercy and steadfast love!” After his temper tantrum he stormed off to sulk. He sat outside Nineveh cursing his fate and hoping that God would change his mind. When it became clear that he wouldn’t, Jonah, fuming, wished he were dead. To describe Jonah as infantile would be an insult to infants. So, as I said, at least we’re not that bad. We’re not half that bad. What a buffoon that Jonah was. But here’s the point. God worked through him. The Assyrians repented. God made use even of him. And Jonah is not alone. God made use of Joseph’s murderous brothers. God made use of that schemer Jacob. God made use of a talking donkey, for crying out loud. That means God can make use of us. Sinner or saint, God can make use of us. He can make use of us all. It’s what he’s all about, after all -- working through sin to effect redemption. No one believed this more than one Jesus of Nazareth. He could have picked anyone for his disciples. There were wise men in his day. There were brave men in his day. There were faithful men in his day. Look who he picked instead. Peter and Andrew, a couple of fishermen who were, to put it mildly, rough around the edges. We don’t know much about Andrew. The gospels give us little to go on as far as he is concerned. But Peter. Really? That guy didn’t know when to put a sock in it. He humiliated himself again and again, but it proved no deterrent. Then there was another couple of fishermen -- James and John, the Sons of Thunder. They weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. After Jesus had spelled it out to them innumerable times -- “I am here to die” -- right before death they put in a bid for preferential treatment. And then there’s Judas. He couldn’t quite add it up either. He was basically a terrorist who was frustrated that Jesus wouldn’t join the cause. Most of his other disciples, we know only by name. But there’s one thing we know about them all. They deserted him. The best man they had ever known. They deserted him in his hour of need. And God made use of them. Through them the church was founded. Through them Christendom arose. Through them billions of people today have found conviction and meaning and hope. The Father Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth can work through us - for us and for our world. May we rally to his cause. Amen.