The Defining Mark

A Sermon for the 17^th Sunday after the Pentecost (RCL A) 10-09-2011

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:              Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6,19-23; Matthew 22:1-14

Title:               The Defining Mark               

Have any of you here ever heard people criticize churches or church-going folks as hypocrites?

If so, raise your hand. I certainly have. Many times.

In some ways, that old complaint is unfair, since all of us are only human afterall. And, more often than not, to be frank, a person makes that protest as a defensive gesture, as a way of protecting themselves from the hard task of reflecting upon, and taking stock of, their own life.

But in another sense, that criticism of churches as hypocrites is entirely fair and justified. 

The good news, however, is that in this regard, we are in good company!

Just look at our story today from the Exodus journey of the Israelites. Here they are, gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moses had just communicated to them the 10 Commandments and the instructions for building the tabernacle, and all of the other instructions that would shape them to be the special covenant people of God.

And what do they do? They immediately go and defy the very first principles of this covenant with God by worshipping idols and setting up false gods in place of the LORD.

“They forgot God their Savior” (Psalm 106:21). But how could they forget so quickly?

The people there at Sinai were, like all of us far too often, hypocrites.

And, of course, all of these parables in Matthew that we have been reading through over the last few weeks – these very dark and violent and bloody parables – all of these reflect a sharp criticism of the people of God as failing to produce the fruits of the Kingdom, as ignoring God’s invitation to the true banquet in the kingdom of God, and instead as settling for lesser feasts, lesser banquets, lesser gods who cannot satisfy their needs.

In response to this rather pessimistic vision of God’s people as constantly failing to get the point throughout history, even down to our own present day, it seems right to ask the obvious question: how, then, can we recognize when God’s people get it right? What are the defining marks of the true people of God – of those who are not hypocrites, of those who get it, and who bear the fruits of the Kingdom? 

Of this we can be sure: the defining marks of those who love and follow the Lord their God in faithfulness are not anything that can be seen on the outside, but rather are the marks of love on the human heart which reveal themselves in our actions.

This past Monday, October 3, was the 5 year anniversary of the massacre at the West Nickel Mines School in Lancaster County, where a gunman (a non-Amish man) entered into an Amish school and opened fire on the schoolgirls, shooting 10 of them before taking his own life.

Some of you may have noticed the many articles which were written for last Sunday’s newspapers in recognition of this anniversary. It was a day of horror for that peaceful Amish community, and there still is no discernable cause for why Charles Roberts IV acted in this way.

But what is most remarkable of all is how the Amish families most directly impacted by this detestable action were quick to offer forgiveness to the murderer (to Charles Roberts) and to his family. Please understand: this forgiveness was instant and spontaneous. There was no meeting where everyone decided to practice forgiveness. It came forth as a natural fruit, a normal outgrowth of the culture of their community.

These Amish parents went straight to Roberts’ wife and children to offer their condolences. Besides his immediate family, all of the people at Roberts’ funeral were Amish. Simply because he was a human being loved by God who now was dead. Donations poured in to this Nickel Mines community from around the world, and the Amish took a large portion of these funds to create a school scholarship fund for Roberts’ children.

And so I ask again: what are the defining marks of a faithful Christian community? There are no outward signs or marks that we must wear in order to signify ourselves as members of the new covenant community.

In this regard, I disagree completely with the Amish, in their insistence upon clothing and tools and styles from the 18^th century Germany as the only means by which Christians might distinguish themselves from the world around them.

But where they are entirely correct is the importance of the goal: we ARE intended to be different, to be a distinct community in the world, shaped by our covenant relationship with God.

And the defining marks of this community are these: compassion and forgiveness.

There is a brief story from the time of St. Francis which highlights this defining characteristic of Christ-following people.

There was a young man who was deeply touched by the witness of Brother Simon, one of St. Francis’ early companions there in 13^th century Italy.

This young man heard about a certain criminal who was captured and condemned to lose both of his eyes as punishment for his crimes. So, this young man rushed to the town council and, moved with courage and compassion, he pleaded for mercy. With tears in his eyes, and with heart-felt prayers which were clearly sincere, the young man asked that HE be given the grace that one of his own eyes might be extracted so that the criminal should not be deprived of both of his eyes. In this way, each would lose only one eye, and both may still have the gift of sight. But the council was greatly moved by the young man’s fervor and generosity and compassion. And so they decided instead to grant the criminal a complete pardon and release.

Now, that is foolish jurisprudence and terrible governance by the town council. I’ll grant you that.

But the point here is the amazing compassion displayed by this young man walking in the shadow of St. Francis.

What do we see when we find someone who has been touched on a deep level by the amazing love which God has poured out upon us in Christ, by the forgiveness and mercy displayed on the cross?

What have people always seen in such people?

Compassion and mercy and forgiveness.

In our parable from Matthew, after all of the random replacement guests had been herded into the wedding hall, the king himself came to inspect those guests, and he found one who was not wearing the customary wedding robe.

What is the wedding robe which that unfortunate guest at the wedding banquet was lacking?

What is the new clothing required of the guests at the wedding banquet of the Lamb of God?

So spoke St. Augustine in his preaching on this parable: “This is the wedding garment: ‘The goal of this command is charity which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.’ …The wedding garment is charity such as this: ‘Though I speak with the tongues of mortals and angels and have not charity, I have become like a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.’”

Many are invited to the banquet of God, many may even draw near to God through faith, but what is the defining mark by which we know those who have been touched and transformed by the grace of Christ?

Not clothing, not our words, not the images on our walls or the jewelry around our neck.

There is no external mark by which we can see this.

There is only a heart which is full of the love of God in Christ, a cup running over with compassion and forgiveness for others. There is only a life that has been transformed and is now continually given over to good works, out of gratitude and joy.

May we be counted among their number. Amen.

Is the Lord Among Us or Not?

A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Lent (RCL A) 3-27-2011, offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42

Is the Lord among us or not?

What a question for the people of Israel to ask! What a question for us to ask!

Is the Lord among us or not?

When we meet the people of Israel here in this story from the Book of Exodus, they are traveling in the wilderness toward Sinai. Just a few weeks earlier, God had delivered them in an amazing way from the hands of the Egyptians. They had seen the dead bodies of the Egyptian army floating in the waters of the sea. And they had rejoiced and celebrated that deliverance from their oppressors. Now, we find them journeying on by stages toward the appointed meeting place with God at Sinai, where they will receive the great gift of the law, the guidance they need to live as God’s free people in the world.

And so what do they do? In our story here, we hear them complaining against God and against Moses, and at the end of this episode, we find them asking this question, which surely seems to be the product of remarkable ingratitude and arrogance and presumption.

Is the Lord among us or not? Come on, God. Are you going to take care of us or not? Are you even here with us, or what? Do you actually have any power after all?

Let’s be honest for a minute: how many of you have ever posed a similar question to God? How many of you have ever complained to God about how life has worked out for you? Even if you have seen God do amazing things in your past, how many of you have complained about God’s apparent lack of involvement at other times? I know I have.

So what are we to think? Do we doubt God’s presence and power? Is this a clear sign of our lack of faith? Does this mean that Christ is not alive in us after all?

I want to suggest to you that it is not. Let me show you this morning how God in fact wanted the Israelites to make these complaints in the wilderness; and that God even now expects and welcomes our questions and our complaints.

When the Israelites left the land of Egypt, they were freed from their physical slavery, but they were not yet free from the bonds of slavery in their minds and in their souls. Hundreds of years of slavery meant that they were not yet ready to live as the free and faithful people of God. They were not yet ready to receive the Torah, the law, not yet ready to receive the gift of the law, and so God puts the people through a series of tests in the wilderness to prepare them for what is to come.

Similar to Jesus in the wilderness during his forty day fast, these tests for the Israelites follow a clearly devised pattern: attack by the Egyptians, a desperate lack of water, the lack of food, the lack of water once again, ending with an attack by the Amelikites. All these things took place in the span of their wandering seven-week journey from the shores of the sea to the mountain of Sinai.

The structure is clear and intentional: it is clear that God wants the people to complain. Of course the people need food to eat. Of course they need water to drink. They are in the desert, after all! God knows that they need water, and so God leads them to a place where they will most certainly be thirsty. Why? So that they can learn that God is the place of the nourishment, not Egypt nor any of the powers of this world! So that they can learn that God is the only one upon whom they must rely for their life and health and salvation.

In this wilderness wandering, heaven replaces earth as the source of their food (remember the manna that fell from the sky), Sinai replaces the Nile as the source of their water, the power of God replaces Egypt as the source of their security!

Remember: Horeb is known as the mountain of God. Horeb is another name for Sinai. And Horeb is precisely the place where God revealed the divine name and plan to Moses in the burning bush! And here, God sends Moses back to this same place for the gift of water straight from the hand of God! Moses is commanded now to take his staff and, not to strike the Nile any longer, but strike the rock at Horeb, so that the needs of the people may be met by the gracious providence of God.

So what did God think of the people’s complaining? The Psalmist certainly understood the people’s actions in a negative light. Serving as the mouthpiece of God, the psalmist said: “Harden not your hearts, as your forebears did in the wilderness, at Meribah, and on that day at Massah, when they tempted me. They put me to the test, though they had seen my works” (Psalm 95:8-9).

But there is another way to look at this episode, as I have already suggested. I believe that God intended to put the people into these difficult situations, as a means toward a greater end. This was a necessary hardship, one which God alone could see and understand from the point of view of eternity. To support this, please consider another example of hardship and suffering, one which we will be remembering soon during Holy Week.

On the night before he suffered, our Lord Jesus Christ, after that final meal with his friends on Maundy Thursday, goes out alone into the garden of Gethsemane in order to spend time with the One he called Abba, to find strength to face the ordeal to come, to get prepared for what is coming. Remember please: Abba, God, is the one with whom Jesus, in his earthly ministry, has spent numerous hours alone in prayer and meditation. Many times in the gospel narratives, we find Jesus going out alone to pray, to spend time alone with his Father, seeking direction and guidance and strength.

Remember too that this Abba is also the one with whom Jesus, as the eternal Son of God, has shared an eternity of intimacy and love. Nothing, ever, in all eternity has ever come between Jesus and the Father.

And so, facing the greatest challenge and difficulty of his life, Jesus goes out alone into the garden to spend time with Abba, to find strength for the day to come. He goes out there to find heaven – the intimate presence of God, with which he was so familiar. And what he finds there instead is hell – the actual absence of God.

This is why he sorrowed with such pain in the garden! Do you think he did not have the strength and the courage to face his death bravely just as countless other martyrs have done? Were his tears a sign of weakness? Of course not. What struck our Lord Jesus so deeply there was the loss of the one upon whom he had always relied, the absence of that relationship which had been the backbone of his entire existence!

Do you understand what that must have felt like?

How many times have you cried out to God for help, when you were facing something very difficult or painful right in front of you, and you were given nothing?! How many times have your prayers been left hanging, like they never went any further than your own breath? How many times have you struggled with the same kind of question as the Israelites: Is God among us or not?

But let me ask you this: were the struggles and hardships of the Israelites in the desert without purpose, or did they work as part of God’s plan to fulfill God’s desires and dreams for the people? Were the struggles and hardship of Jesus in Gethsemane without purpose, or did they work as part of God’s plan to fulfill God’s desires and dreams for all people?

Are our own struggles and hardships without purpose, or do they work as part of God’s plan to fulfill God’s desires and dreams for us?

How quick we are to assume that, because we cannot see the bigger picture, then of course there must not be any greater purpose behind our struggles and pain! As if our own perspective was the sole measure of reality!

My friends: let the examples of our ancestors in the wilderness, and of our Lord in the garden, serve to calm our minds and remind us to put our whole trust in the good purposes of God, even when we cannot see them. As St. Paul has written, God has proven his love for us. Therefore, we have no right to allow anything into our hearts but joyful confidence and hope. Thanks be to God. Amen.


BTW:
Doubt is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of faith is fear.

Hate is not the opposite of love. The opposite of love is apathy.