Sermons at St. John’s Presbyterian Church

Hey, Wait a Minute God, Is This What I Signed Up For?

Transcribed from the sermon preached September 5, 2010

 The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings: Jeremiah 19:1-11, Luke 14:25-33

I love the old cartoons when Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester, or Elmer Fudd go speeding down a road all confident of their chase, only to find themselves with no road underneath them, or a piano above them, or the boss catching them.  I love the delay, when after running off the cliff, Wile E. Coyote, with a pitiful look on his face, realizes for a brief suspended moment that he is in big trouble, and then we hear the dropping bomb sound and a splat. 

Even as we plan for life, life doesn’t always follow our plans.  We can’t always see over the next hill or around the next curve.  Jesus is letting the disciples know that the life of faith will not be a simple cakewalk.  He is letting them know ahead of time; He is not preaching a prosperity gospel.  There are some preachers who will tell you that if you follow Jesus, your life will be filled with success.  The corollary, of course, is that if your life is not filled with success, then you are not faithful.

We get a version of this theology from Jeremiah, and we can assume that while by itself it does not paint the whole picture of the life of faith and relationship with God, there is some truth to be gleaned.  There are actions, faithful or unfaithful which have consequences.  Certain actions of points of view will bend us out of shape, lead us in the wrong direction, and necessitate a reworking, a redirection - like a pot which doesn’t quite form the way anticipated, sometimes we require a fresh start, a reshaping 

So from Luke we get the message from Jesus that a life of faith will be hard and from Jeremiah we get the message that an unfaithful life will be hard.  So, life is hard.  But a faithful life can be a good life, a life, which connects us to something and someone more beautiful than the hardship.

But there are differences in who our two authors are writing to.  Jeremiah is writing to a nation or a remnant of elite about the identity of a nation, while Luke is writing to a fringe remnant, to those contemplating the life of a discipleship of Christ Jesus. 

Jeremiah lived at a time when Egypt and Babylon were the two super powers vying for control of the world.  Factions within Judah preferred to align with one over the other. Alignment either way meant paying tribute, honoring gods, and establishing business connections and marriages.  Jeremiah liked the ideas of King Josiah, who, while the super powers were occupied in other areas, was able to centralize power in Jerusalem, denounce other shines and tribute to other gods, and emphasize a newly discovered long lost law of Moses.  Faithfulness to God would ensure the security of the nation.

But Babylon soon got over its distractions and returned to put down a rebellious Judah.  As the tension heated up, once again various factions sought compromise with outside powers.  No side was successful and Babylon in 587 sacked Jerusalem, sending the elite into exile.  The fall of the temple, the seat of Yahweh, led to a crisis of faith.  People had to ask, if we are the covenant people, and God is the God we should worship, why was the temple destroyed and why were we sent into exile?

As we see in the transition from Israel to all nations in verse 6 and 7, for those in exile, God is now understood to be not only the author for the History of Israel, but for the world. [6] "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? says the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
[7] If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, [8] and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will repent of the evil that I intended to do to it. [9] And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, [10] and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will repent of the good which I had intended to do to it.

                It is a tough pill to swallow that God is shaping not only Israel, not only the USA, but all nations.  Walter Brueggemann in his commentary, “Like Fire in the Bones,” writes “I have found it interpretively suggestive to see an analogue between the destruction of Jerusalem in the sixth century around which the book of Jeremiah pivots, and the crisis of 9/11 in U.S. society. Symbolically the significance of the vent is enormous because it represents the undoing of U.S. exceptionalism, the notion that the United States by the providence of God is not subject to the laws of history as is every other nation state. That same sense of exceptionalism operated in ancient Jerusalem, under the aegis of king and temple, to claim that Jerusalem was immune to the vagaries of history. That destruction of Jerusalem made the continuation of that illusion in ancient Israel impossible. Mutatis mutandis, the crisis of 9/11 also constitutes a recognition that U.S. exceptionalism is broken; that is why the disaster is so acute for those who practice the ideology of the United States as a privileged superpower, and why the break is so unnerving for a younger generation that has never had the occasion to questions that unspoken but widely assumed claim. In both ancient Jerusalem and in contemporary U.S. society, life and faith after the loss of exceptionalism constitute a deep challenge that at the same time evokes denial and generates despair and cynical violence. (from the Preface page xxi)

Some of us have had what John Updike called ego theism: the conviction that one’s exalted sense of self amounts to divine privilege. She regards herself as a Christian because God has granted her success. Those endowed with a splendid self have a duty to be selfish. What a shock it is when we find ourselves in need of being reshaped.

If 9/11 threatened our idea that the nation was god or untouchably blessed, Katrina and the BP spill have shown the idolatry of industry and the technological fix at the expense of a sustainable Creation.  And finally, in the financial meltdown, we see the error of the priests of the cult of capitalism. Not that the Church has no lessons to learn.  Abuse and bureaucracy send God and the thoughtful for the door.  It is easy in such a time to think that repentance is too late, or as the leaders in verse 12, “It is no use.”  It is difficult to not become with hopelessness or nihilism, unable to be reshaped.   

Still the word from Jeremiah is not all without hope.  We have a choice.  That is if we have not lost all flexibility, if we are not hardened dry, if we still hold the capacity for repentance, Yahweh can reform us.

Brueggemann again, “Jeremiahs word born among Judah’s exiles is about the beginning of a new world wrought only by the mercy and freedom of God. This is a new possibility judged by hopeless former rulers to be impossible. They believe that there can be no new thing. Such a new world with a new David, a new covenant, a new healing, is always thought to be too hard for YHWH. But YHWH can do it. Life is given again when YHWH is known to be the giver of newness.”(from a chapter called Jeremiah: Portrait of a Prophet page 17)  

Now in our Luke passage, Jesus is drawing large crowds, no doubt some lookiloo disciples, people who have heard about him, think that maybe if they follow him something good will come of it.  I can imagine that these crowds around Jesus are beginning to become a scene; Jesus has become a Jewish rock star, that it is a good place to meet people, maybe even find a partner to start a family or make a business contact.  There is an energy around Jesus and it feels good.  The buzz is that he is not just the founder of this new start up cult but maybe the messiah, the new king, the new David, and more than a few consider riding his coat tails up to the top. 

Or maybe his compassion draws the feel good people too, like those of us who want relationship and community without commitment, discipleship without discipline, a little Americanized Buddhist or Franciscan disengagement, a little Jesus seminar at the spa or on a cruise ship, a little chicken soup for the soul and blessing of the animals while we wait for the family inheritance.

So Jesus comes out tough: this isn’t fuzzy feel good family values, this bandwagon leads to the cross.  We see Jesus reflected in Gandhi not Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King Jr. not Glen Beck.  Nothing against meeting people, family, successful business, patriotism, an energetic buzz of a start up, or feeling good, but Jesus is letting us know that if we are to follow him, allegiance to those things is secondary.  If these reasons are why we have come, then we are in the wrong place.

Jesus doesn’t want his disciples like Wile E. Coyote, running headlong enthusiastic to be surprised to find their leader or their selves on the cross. He wants us to know, plan and choose up front so we are ready for action. 

When the truth of God hurts our national image and our family relations, those connections and possessions that make us somebody, then Jesus is calling us to be nobodies…but nobodies for God.  In a world which calls us to consume and possess without thought for God’s creation, to look out for ourselves and our family and get ours while we can, to idolize the nation, to foster fear and hate of the other to galvanize our tribe and justify colonialism, when bombastic boneheads co-opt founding fathers and mothers to promote scapegoating, fear and war, then it is time to risk being nobodies for Christ. It is time to become resident aliens, in the world but not of it.

But if the Gospel is true, then there is hope for nobodies.  If we are not stiff and dry, Jeremiah says, God will reshape us into a new somebody, into a new community, a new family. We will be shaped, as Peter says, into God’s people.  For once we were no people, but now we are God’s people.  Once we had not received mercy but now we have received mercy.