Monday, June 16, 2008

05 Pentecost A 08
Father’s Day
June 15, 2008

Romans 5:1-8
1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.


A Different Kind of Hope

We’d barely gotten to know Vic McLawhorn here at Philippi before he died way too young. As I spoke with his grown daughter, I learned of an interesting story about him.

It seems that after Vic’s kids had grown up and moved away, Vic and Marietta had all the windows replaced at their home. When the workmen took out the old windows, Vic told them to let him keep the upstairs front bedroom window, though they didn’t know why. Vic then called his daughter and said, “I kept your bedroom window. I thought that since you climbed in and out of it so often you might like to have it.”

Fathers have a way of holding us accountable and at the same time loving and forgiving us. I sometimes think this, and not the fact of gender, accounts for why Jesus referred to God as “Father.” This unusual way of loving is part of what Paul is talking about this morning.
And Paul is talking about hope in this reading. There are three mentions of the word in the passage.

“…we boast in our hope of sharing in the glory of God.” And then later, he says, “character produces hope” and that finally, “…hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

We talked a few weeks ago about God’s righteousness being different from ours. God’s righteousness is his faithfulness. He stays with us even when we don’t stay with him. Somebody wrote that human freedom is more about letting us hoist ourselves by our own petards. God wants us to go off and try to make our own future, and then when it all comes crashing down, we come back crying and he says, “So how’s your way working?”

Some of you might remember the TV show, The Twilight Zone. One episode, called “The Button,” told the story of a couple in desperate need of money. A stranger comes to them and offers them a button. He tells them that all they have to do is press the button and someone they don’t know will die and leave them $100,000. Well, they debate the question, how much they need the money, the fact they don’t know the person involved, and so on.

Finally they push the button. The stranger shows up and gives them the $100,000 and asks for the button back. They ask him what he’s going to do with it. He says, “Don’t worry, I’ll give it to someone who doesn’t know you.”

So God’s righteousness is different from ours. We’re on the tit-for-tat, “I’ll rub your back if you rub mine” program. I’ll do right to avoid getting punished and to get the reward. But God’s on the “I’ll be there no matter what” plan. He does right even when the reward is hatred and rejection.

In the same way, God’s glory is different from our idea of glory. My idea is that glory is getting exalted by everyone, being on top, getting praise from all sides, winning the big prize. And I suppose God’s glory ends up being that in the long run. But it doesn’t begin there.

It begins on the cross. It begins in the Christ, crucified and risen. Here’s the mystery from the heavenly places, friends, the mystical truth of Christian faith. God’s glory is his mercy.

God’s glory is that deeply entwined in his great power and superiority and perfection is his decision to forgive and love and bless those who hate, despise and ignore him.

That is God’s glory. Just as God’s righteousness is not our righteousness, so God’s idea of glory is different from ours.

I was talking with Mrs. Miller a few weeks ago about the propensity we humans have to hold grudges. It amazes me how I can nurse and nurture a grudge over a long period of time. There must be some pleasure in it I suppose, or people wouldn’t do it. But in a way, it’s a lot of work for not much payoff. Still, we can summon to mind the wrong that was done and it will awaken our rage afresh and we can rededicate ourselves to our everlasting condemnation of the wrongdoer.

There are a lot of other forms grudges can take. It can just be that one story we remember about somebody, some not-very-flattering story, and whenever that person’s name comes up, we remember that story. We might know a whole lot of stories about that person, but only the most unflattering one comes to mind. Worse, we might make a point of telling it.

I’ve heard a lot of those kinds of stories in this town, boy.

So Mrs. Miller and I were talking about grudges and at some point she sighed and said, “Why can’t we just give up and love everybody?”

It’s what we want to do, but well, everybody else just makes it impossible, don’t they? If you really were to love everybody, you’d not only have to forgive your enemies, but actively bless them and serve them. You’d have to give up on trying to change other people, and try to serve them instead. You’d have to give away what you had to anyone who had need.

And you know, those enemies, well, they deserve our anger, don’t they? It’s not our fault we’re angry. And it would be easy to love those people in our lives that need to change, they just have to change first. It’s not our fault they don’t see the light. And those people who don’t have what they need, well, they can go out and get it just like I do.

And besides, if I don’t fight back, that means the enemy wins.

Of course, God doesn’t stop blessing us when we turn against him. God doesn’t stop loving us even when we refuse to change. God doesn’t stop giving to us even when we are lazy. And God doesn’t fight back, but wins anyway. Christ, who was crucified because he refused to fight back, rose from the dead.

So this simple message is very troubling to the world and the way the world works.
The world doesn’t like God. The world, that is to say, the fallen creation in which we live, governed by greed and fear and brutality, does not like God.

God, however, loves the world.

The world doesn’t want God’s love. The world doesn’t want to dissolve differences, erase boundaries, or share equally. And the tit for tat, I’ll rub your back if you rub mine system is excellent for maintaining those boundaries. It’s what people like to call “reality.” But this is a misnomer. We construct our reality. It’s real because we made it.

Somebody said the church exists precisely for the people who won’t go near it. We who are called to this assembly exist to very intentionally proclaim this love from God that the world really would rather not hear about it.

I was reading Fred Craddock’s classic book on preaching, “As One Without Authority.” There’s a sermon on Mark’s Easter story called “And They Said Nothing to Anyone.” It refers to the strange line about the women, filled with fear, running off from the empty tomb and not telling anyone. Of course, as he points out, the literal translation of the Greek in Mark is “they said nothing to nobody.” Let me read:


The most common thing said to me in this church, which is run by volunteers,
people who are good people—they cut down trees, mow the grass, wash the windows, serve, fix the table, decorate, bring flowers—but the one thing I hear most is
this: “Don’t ask me to say anything.” I’ll do anything, but don’t ask me to say
anything. I’ll climb up and change the lightbulb, but don’t ask me to say
anything. Why is it that we can just chatter like magpies, but mention Jesus
Christ and it’s “Don’t ask me to say anything?” I hear an expression a lot these
days—it’s not enough to talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk. Well, that’s
nice. The trouble with it is, it’s backwards. It’s not enough to walk the walk.
You’ve got to talk the talk. Because the most difficult and most effective and
most profound thing you’ll ever do for Jesus Christ is to say something. And
when I ask for talkers, no one comes. If I say, “Let’s redo the building,”
everybody comes. This is no criticism of anyone, but an honest recognition that
the fundamental human sacrament is to say something important. And that’s hard
to do.

To say very simply that the crucified Jesus is risen from the dead is to say something very important, and it is to say something the world probably would rather not hear.

Now I want to quickly point out here that preaching condemnation is often taken as being bold and really getting into the gospel. It’s powerful in the world because it’s the world’s way. It’s the devil’s business to condemn, because it cuts people off from one another and from God. Lots of people confuse the devil’s business with God’s business, and of course, that’s just the way the devil likes it.

No, the really dangerous thing to preach is forgiveness. The dangerous thing is to remove the boundaries people erect to create their own peace. And interestingly enough, Paul says that the suffering that comes with giving oneself to this message is precisely the way God shapes us as his children, precisely the way we come to the place of hope.

Our hope is not for our personal fulfillment. We look forward to heaven, yes, but this is not the hope which Paul is teaching us. Our hope, my hope, is for coming to the place where I can show mercy, where, as Mrs. Miller has said, I can really “give up and love everybody.”

Amen.

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