Promises, promises
Commentary
Object:
Psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, often wrote about the meaninglessness of his patients' lives.
He was able to sympathize with them in a powerful way, since he spent part of World
War II in a concentration camp. He remembered the dark weeks of 1944 vividly: the
numbness of the gray days, the cold sameness of every dreary morning.
Suddenly, like a bolt of bright colors, came the stunning whisper that the Allies had landed at Normandy. The push was on. The Germans were running. The tide of the war had turned. "By Christmas we'll be released!" they told each other.
Frankl recalls the changes that took place in the camp: Every day the workers went out to their same jobs but their hearts were lighter, and the work seemed a bit easier. Each mealtime they peered into the same cauldron of slop but somehow it seemed less difficult to swallow since every bite was a countdown to freedom. The stress in each barracks community was the same: people fighting for a little privacy; jealousies and dislikes aired in spicy retorts. Yet forgiveness came a little easier these days, for the ups and downs of the present dimmed as the future became a closer and closer reality.
It was interesting, says Frankl. Fewer people died in those months. Even the weakest ones began to cling tenaciously to life. But Christmas 1944 passed, and the Allied troops never came. There were setbacks and defeats, and the bits of news smuggled into the camp made no more promises.
Then, says Frankl, the people began to die. No new diseases came into the camp. Rations remained the same. There was no change in working conditions. But the people began to die one after the other, as if some terrible plague had struck.
And, indeed, it had. It was the plague of hopelessness, the epidemic of despair. Studies show that we can live forty to sixty days without food, eight to twelve days without water, and maybe three minutes without oxygen. But without hope we can't survive even a moment. Without hope we die. Without hope there's no reason to wake up in the morning.
Hope is at the heart of today's passages. Hope is the promise of God to Abram and Sarai that they will not die childless. Hope is the pledge of tomorrow given in the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Hope is the message of the disciples of Jesus, scattering throughout Palestine and beyond, bringing the message of the kingdom of God to all the villages and towns. There are times when hope is gone, when life is cruel, and when the future is a blank wall. Then, says the gospel, there is only one way to carry on. Hope in God.
Genesis 18:1-15 (21:1-7)
Abram is an Aramean from the heart of Mesopotamia whose father, Terah, begins a journey westward that Abram continues upon his father's death. Whatever Terah's reasons might have been for moving from the old family village -- restlessness, treasure- seeking, displacement, wanderlust -- Genesis 12 informs us that Abram's continuation of the trek was motivated by a divine call to seek a land that would become his by providential appointment. This was the first of four similar divine declarations that occur in quick succession in chapters 12, 13, 15, and 17. Such repetition cues us to the importance of these theophanies, but they ought also cause us to look more closely at the forms in which the promises to Abram are made.
In brief, Abram's first three encounters with God are shaped as promises of gifts that God would bring into Abram's future: land, riches, and heirs. Only in Genesis 17, however, does the language of the dialogue alter and Abram is challenged to respond with visible acts of trust -- his name is changed (along with Sarai's), and the covenant cutting of circumcision is introduced to mark the family as under new management. All of these elements form the background to today's lectionary reading. Now, in today's lectionary reading, the promises are reaffirmed in a visitation that calls on Abraham and Sarah to provide hospitality for God so that God might provide hospitality for them. The "laughter" of Isaac's miraculous birth is pledged.
For ancient Israel (and through scripture, for us, as well), the implications would be striking. First of all, the nation would see itself as the unique and miraculously born child fulfilling a divine promise. Israel could not exist were it not for God's unusual efforts at getting Abram and Sarai pregnant in a way that was humanly impossible. Second, they were the descendents of a man on a divine pilgrimage. Not only was Abram en route to a land of promise, but he was also the instrument of God for the blessing of all the nations of the earth. In other words, Israel was born with a mandate, and it was globally encompassing. Third, there was a selection in the process of creating their identity. They were children of Abraham, but so were a number of area tribes and nations descending from Ishmael. What made them special was the uniqueness of their lineage through Isaac, the miraculously born child of Abraham and Sarah's old age. Israel had international kinship relations, but she also retained a unique identity fostered by the divine distinctions between branches of the family.
In recalling the tale of father Abraham in this manner, Genesis places before Israel at Sinai the important element of unique identity: We came into this world miraculously as a result of a divine initiative to bless all the nations of the earth; therefore we are a unique people with the powerful backing of the creator and participating in a mission that is still in progress. It is in the divine promises of unwarranted but hugely needed hope that laughter, whether in disbelief or the unbridled hilarity of fulfillment, is released.
Romans 5:1-8
In Romans 1:18--3:20, Paul describes the crippling effect of sin. But once the stage has been set for his readers to realize again the pervasive grip of evil in this world, including within their own divided and deluded hearts, Paul marches Abraham out onto the stage as a model of divine religious reconstruction. God does not wish to be distant from the world, judgmental and vengeful. Instead, as shown to Abraham, God desires an ever- renewing relationship with the people God made. Thus, as exhibited in Abraham's life (Romans 4), God initiates a relationship of favor and grace with us. In fact, according to Paul, this purpose of God is no less spectacular than the divine quest to re-create the world, undoing the effects that the cancer of sin has blighted upon us (Romans 5).
The language Paul uses to talk about salvation in Romans 5 is that of homecoming. We were alienated, but now we have come near. We were strangers, but now we have become the dwelling place of God's Spirit. We were sinners, but Jesus Christ has made us friends and family. When we actually begin to breathe the air of the gospel, we begin to smell the aromas of home.
Christopher Fry put it this way in one of his plays (The Lady's Not for Burning): Margaret and Nicholas are talking about a woman who seems to be acting strangely. Margaret says, "She must be lost."
Nicholas responds, wistfully, "Who isn't? The best thing we can do is to make whatever we're lost in look as much like home as we can."
That's what we do with our lives, isn't it? We have so many goals and dreams and hopes in life, yet so few of them turn out. We get old before we've done half of what we wanted. Somehow we never become what we thought we might. We make a few mistakes along the way. We disappoint some people, and they disappoint us. Even our best times have an edge of bitterness attached to them -- when they end we walk away nursing our nostalgia. We're always a little bit away from home -- from the home we remember, or the home we desire; from the dream we miss, or the dream we're still looking for. Especially in our relationship with God, we have become outsiders and foreigners. Then, in the mystery of grace, God steps into our world in Jesus, takes our alienation upon himself, and welcomes us back into the family.
That's what Nicholas is saying to Margaret in Christopher Fry's play. We're all a bit lost in life. We're all a bit away from home. The best we can do is make what we have look as much as possible like what we think "home" should be, until we can finally see our true home, and, like Paul suggests later in this letter, bring our friends along with us.
No matter where we go, no matter what we do, there must live in each of us a touch of that homesickness, or we die a horrible death. Our trips "home" are only a pale imitation of the place we belong and merely a wayside rest stop on a restless journey to the real home of God's love and God's eternity. More than we know, that is where we all truly want to go. And only in finding Jesus and the coming of God's kingdom will our desires find fulfillment, and our longings be satisfied. Only then will our homesickness end.
Matthew 9:35--10:8 (9-23)
If we began with Abraham and the promises of hope that launched God's great mission in our world, we come now to the culmination of that witness. Jesus has appeared and here affirms the great mission of God by empowering his disciples to speak the gospel of heaven on his behalf. Matthew ties this witness directly to Abraham, beginning the gospel by telling us that Jesus is the son of Abraham, the one who fulfills the greatest promises of God. It must have been a strange thing for Abraham to experience the call of Yahweh. It was a big call from a big God, for it set in motion a mission that echoes throughout the Bible and is still unfolding today. Through you, said God, I will bless all people on earth. For that reason Israel exists as a witness to its neighboring nations. For the same reason, the younger children of Abraham in the church of Jesus engage in global mission efforts, as our Lord himself commissions here.
A scene from Tony Campolo's life makes us think about it in fresh ways. When Tony spoke at a conference in Hawaii it took a while for his body to catch up with the move across five time zones. The first night at his hotel his internal clock buzzed at 3 a.m. and his stomach growled for attention.
Tony wandered quiet Honolulu streets looking for a place to get fried eggs and bacon. All the respectable places were closed, and Tony finally ended up at a greasy dive in a narrow and dim alley. The place reeked with grunge. Tony was afraid to touch the menu for fear that it would stick to his fingers and that if he opened it something with too many legs to count might crawl out.
Suddenly Tony wasn't hungry, no matter how much his stomach protested. He saw a stack of donuts under a cracked plastic cover. "I'll have a donut and a coffee," he said. That ought to be safe.
The guy poured a cup of dark, thick coffee. Then he wiped his greasy hand on his dirty apron, grabbed a donut with his fingers, and threw it on the counter in front of Tony. There sat Tony Campolo at 3:30 in the morning, gagging on sour coffee and a stale donut.
All at once the door slammed open and eight or nine prostitutes sauntered in, just finished with a night's work. The joint was small and when the women crowded at the counter they surrounded Tony, swearing, smoking, and gossiping tales of their johns. Another gulp and bite, and Tony would scram.
But something stopped his exit when the woman next to him turned to her friend and said, with a faraway look in her eye, "You know what? Tomorrow's my birthday. I'm gonna be 39...."
That got Tony thinking. He asked the owner if he knew the woman who sat next to him. "Sure, that's Agnes. She's been coming here for years. Comes every night about this time."
"Well," said Tony, "she just said that it was her birthday tomorrow. What do you think? Do you think you and I could do something about that -- maybe throw her a birthday party right here tomorrow night?"
The man got a cute smile on his chubby cheeks. "That's great!" he said. So they made their plans. At 2:30 the next morning Tony was back. He brought crepe paper decorations and a foldout sign that said, "Happy Birthday, Agnes!" By three o'clock, the diner was looking pretty good. By 3:15, it was crowded with wall-to-wall prostitutes. At 3:30, Agnes and her group walked in. Tony had everyone ready to shout, "Happy birthday, Agnes!" She was flabbergasted. Her mouth fell open, her legs wobbled, she put her hands to her head, and almost fell over stunned. Her friend grabbed her by the arm and led her to the counter where her birthday cake rested on a pedestal. Tony led the room in an energetic chorus of "Happy Birthday to You."
Agnes began to cry. She saw the cake with all the candles and wept. Harry, who was not used to seeing a prostitute cry, said rather gruffly, "Blow out the candles, Agnes! Come on! Blow out the candles! If you don't blow 'em out, I'll have to do it!"
So Agnes composed herself, and after a minute or two she blew them out. Everyone cheered. "Cut the cake, Agnes," they yelled. "Cut the cake!"
But Agnes looked down at the cake and, without taking her eyes off it, said to Harry, "Look, Harry ... Would it be all right with you if I ... I mean, is it okay if I ... What I mean is, do you think it's okay if I just kept the cake for a little while? I mean, is it all right if we don't eat it right away?"
Harry didn't know what to say. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "Sure, if that's what you want. Go ahead and keep the cake. Take it home if you want to."
Agnes turned to Tony and asked again, "Is it okay? I live just down the street. Can I take the cake home for a minute? I'll be right back. Honest!"
Agnes picked up the cake like it was the Holy Grail itself. Slowly, she promenaded through the room with it high in front of her for everyone to see. She carried her treasure out the door and everyone there watched her in stunned silence. When she was gone nobody seemed to know what to do, so Tony got up on a chair and said, "What do you say we pray?"
There they were together in a hole-in-the-wall, greasy spoon, all the prostitutes of Honolulu's streets, at 3:30 in the morning, and Tony gathered them to pray for Agnes. He prayed for her life. He prayed for her health. He prayed for her soul and her relationship with God.
When Tony finished praying Harry leaned over the counter and said, accusingly, "Hey! You never told me you was a preacher! What kind of a church do you belong to anyway?"
Tony replied, "I belong to a church that throws parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning."
Harry thought about that for a moment and then said, "Naw you don't! There ain't no church like that! If there was, I'd join it! Yessir, I'd be a member of a church like that!"
What do you think? Would you be a member of a church like that? Is that what God had in mind when talking with Abraham way back in Genesis? How does the Bible urge us to take the journey of Jesus' disciples and follow the mission of God?
Application
Years ago, Dr. Arthur Gossip preached a sermon titled, "When Life Tumbles In, What Then?" He preached it the day after his beloved wife had suddenly died. No one could bring more powerfully than he the challenge of the closing lines:
"Our hearts are very frail, and there are places where the road is very steep and very lonely. Standing in the roaring Jordan, cold with its dreadful chill and very conscious of its terror, of its rushing, I ... call back to you who one day will have your turn to cross it, 'Be of good cheer, my brother, for I feel the bottom and it is sound!' "
That's the hope which breathes through today's readings.
Alternative Application
Romans 5:1-8. Paul's opening in Romans 5 is fresh with many sermon nuggets. Don Francisco's great lyrics in "I'll Never Let Go of Your Hand" might make wonderful poetry to flesh out the themes of this pregnant passage.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19
The words of this psalm emerge from a grateful heart. They flow from the consciousness of one who knows the saving power of God in concrete terms. More to the point, they reflect the experience of someone who has been rescued. Public safety professionals experience this kind of thing frequently. In the daily line of their work they rescue people, and the gratefulness of some of them is remarkable. A woman whose children have been rescued from a fire shows up at the fire station every week with gifts for the firefighters. She falls all over herself thanking them again and again. She becomes a booster for the fire station, raising funds and developing community support. She even remembers the rescuers in her will. This is the kind of gratefulness that flows from this psalm.
But here we have more than brave firefighters on the job. Here we have God as the rescuer.
In a culture where privilege and entitlement are the prevailing sentiments of the day, this is a hard thing to grasp. Most people can't imagine that they need rescuing, so being grateful for such a rescue isn't really within their emotional vocabulary. Yet the truth is that we do need rescuing. We need rescuing from this epidemic of consumerism, which is strangling our spirit and ruining the life of the planet. We need rescuing from the blindness that keeps us from being sensitive to the suffering of others. We need to be rescued from our participation in the wounding and death of millions of innocent people. There is no question about it. We're in trouble. Whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, we are a people who need rescuing. We are a people who need God.
The incredible part of it all is that our rescuer is here, present, ready. All we need do is reach out and grab the lifeline. All we need do is turn to God in our hearts. Once we are able to do this, our own voices will match that of this psalm. Once we accept and embrace this God who rescues we will know the power and wonder of a grateful heart. We will then understand what it means to be saved and our impulse, our desire will be to "offer a thanksgiving of sacrifice as we call upon the name of the Lord."
Suddenly, like a bolt of bright colors, came the stunning whisper that the Allies had landed at Normandy. The push was on. The Germans were running. The tide of the war had turned. "By Christmas we'll be released!" they told each other.
Frankl recalls the changes that took place in the camp: Every day the workers went out to their same jobs but their hearts were lighter, and the work seemed a bit easier. Each mealtime they peered into the same cauldron of slop but somehow it seemed less difficult to swallow since every bite was a countdown to freedom. The stress in each barracks community was the same: people fighting for a little privacy; jealousies and dislikes aired in spicy retorts. Yet forgiveness came a little easier these days, for the ups and downs of the present dimmed as the future became a closer and closer reality.
It was interesting, says Frankl. Fewer people died in those months. Even the weakest ones began to cling tenaciously to life. But Christmas 1944 passed, and the Allied troops never came. There were setbacks and defeats, and the bits of news smuggled into the camp made no more promises.
Then, says Frankl, the people began to die. No new diseases came into the camp. Rations remained the same. There was no change in working conditions. But the people began to die one after the other, as if some terrible plague had struck.
And, indeed, it had. It was the plague of hopelessness, the epidemic of despair. Studies show that we can live forty to sixty days without food, eight to twelve days without water, and maybe three minutes without oxygen. But without hope we can't survive even a moment. Without hope we die. Without hope there's no reason to wake up in the morning.
Hope is at the heart of today's passages. Hope is the promise of God to Abram and Sarai that they will not die childless. Hope is the pledge of tomorrow given in the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Hope is the message of the disciples of Jesus, scattering throughout Palestine and beyond, bringing the message of the kingdom of God to all the villages and towns. There are times when hope is gone, when life is cruel, and when the future is a blank wall. Then, says the gospel, there is only one way to carry on. Hope in God.
Genesis 18:1-15 (21:1-7)
Abram is an Aramean from the heart of Mesopotamia whose father, Terah, begins a journey westward that Abram continues upon his father's death. Whatever Terah's reasons might have been for moving from the old family village -- restlessness, treasure- seeking, displacement, wanderlust -- Genesis 12 informs us that Abram's continuation of the trek was motivated by a divine call to seek a land that would become his by providential appointment. This was the first of four similar divine declarations that occur in quick succession in chapters 12, 13, 15, and 17. Such repetition cues us to the importance of these theophanies, but they ought also cause us to look more closely at the forms in which the promises to Abram are made.
In brief, Abram's first three encounters with God are shaped as promises of gifts that God would bring into Abram's future: land, riches, and heirs. Only in Genesis 17, however, does the language of the dialogue alter and Abram is challenged to respond with visible acts of trust -- his name is changed (along with Sarai's), and the covenant cutting of circumcision is introduced to mark the family as under new management. All of these elements form the background to today's lectionary reading. Now, in today's lectionary reading, the promises are reaffirmed in a visitation that calls on Abraham and Sarah to provide hospitality for God so that God might provide hospitality for them. The "laughter" of Isaac's miraculous birth is pledged.
For ancient Israel (and through scripture, for us, as well), the implications would be striking. First of all, the nation would see itself as the unique and miraculously born child fulfilling a divine promise. Israel could not exist were it not for God's unusual efforts at getting Abram and Sarai pregnant in a way that was humanly impossible. Second, they were the descendents of a man on a divine pilgrimage. Not only was Abram en route to a land of promise, but he was also the instrument of God for the blessing of all the nations of the earth. In other words, Israel was born with a mandate, and it was globally encompassing. Third, there was a selection in the process of creating their identity. They were children of Abraham, but so were a number of area tribes and nations descending from Ishmael. What made them special was the uniqueness of their lineage through Isaac, the miraculously born child of Abraham and Sarah's old age. Israel had international kinship relations, but she also retained a unique identity fostered by the divine distinctions between branches of the family.
In recalling the tale of father Abraham in this manner, Genesis places before Israel at Sinai the important element of unique identity: We came into this world miraculously as a result of a divine initiative to bless all the nations of the earth; therefore we are a unique people with the powerful backing of the creator and participating in a mission that is still in progress. It is in the divine promises of unwarranted but hugely needed hope that laughter, whether in disbelief or the unbridled hilarity of fulfillment, is released.
Romans 5:1-8
In Romans 1:18--3:20, Paul describes the crippling effect of sin. But once the stage has been set for his readers to realize again the pervasive grip of evil in this world, including within their own divided and deluded hearts, Paul marches Abraham out onto the stage as a model of divine religious reconstruction. God does not wish to be distant from the world, judgmental and vengeful. Instead, as shown to Abraham, God desires an ever- renewing relationship with the people God made. Thus, as exhibited in Abraham's life (Romans 4), God initiates a relationship of favor and grace with us. In fact, according to Paul, this purpose of God is no less spectacular than the divine quest to re-create the world, undoing the effects that the cancer of sin has blighted upon us (Romans 5).
The language Paul uses to talk about salvation in Romans 5 is that of homecoming. We were alienated, but now we have come near. We were strangers, but now we have become the dwelling place of God's Spirit. We were sinners, but Jesus Christ has made us friends and family. When we actually begin to breathe the air of the gospel, we begin to smell the aromas of home.
Christopher Fry put it this way in one of his plays (The Lady's Not for Burning): Margaret and Nicholas are talking about a woman who seems to be acting strangely. Margaret says, "She must be lost."
Nicholas responds, wistfully, "Who isn't? The best thing we can do is to make whatever we're lost in look as much like home as we can."
That's what we do with our lives, isn't it? We have so many goals and dreams and hopes in life, yet so few of them turn out. We get old before we've done half of what we wanted. Somehow we never become what we thought we might. We make a few mistakes along the way. We disappoint some people, and they disappoint us. Even our best times have an edge of bitterness attached to them -- when they end we walk away nursing our nostalgia. We're always a little bit away from home -- from the home we remember, or the home we desire; from the dream we miss, or the dream we're still looking for. Especially in our relationship with God, we have become outsiders and foreigners. Then, in the mystery of grace, God steps into our world in Jesus, takes our alienation upon himself, and welcomes us back into the family.
That's what Nicholas is saying to Margaret in Christopher Fry's play. We're all a bit lost in life. We're all a bit away from home. The best we can do is make what we have look as much as possible like what we think "home" should be, until we can finally see our true home, and, like Paul suggests later in this letter, bring our friends along with us.
No matter where we go, no matter what we do, there must live in each of us a touch of that homesickness, or we die a horrible death. Our trips "home" are only a pale imitation of the place we belong and merely a wayside rest stop on a restless journey to the real home of God's love and God's eternity. More than we know, that is where we all truly want to go. And only in finding Jesus and the coming of God's kingdom will our desires find fulfillment, and our longings be satisfied. Only then will our homesickness end.
Matthew 9:35--10:8 (9-23)
If we began with Abraham and the promises of hope that launched God's great mission in our world, we come now to the culmination of that witness. Jesus has appeared and here affirms the great mission of God by empowering his disciples to speak the gospel of heaven on his behalf. Matthew ties this witness directly to Abraham, beginning the gospel by telling us that Jesus is the son of Abraham, the one who fulfills the greatest promises of God. It must have been a strange thing for Abraham to experience the call of Yahweh. It was a big call from a big God, for it set in motion a mission that echoes throughout the Bible and is still unfolding today. Through you, said God, I will bless all people on earth. For that reason Israel exists as a witness to its neighboring nations. For the same reason, the younger children of Abraham in the church of Jesus engage in global mission efforts, as our Lord himself commissions here.
A scene from Tony Campolo's life makes us think about it in fresh ways. When Tony spoke at a conference in Hawaii it took a while for his body to catch up with the move across five time zones. The first night at his hotel his internal clock buzzed at 3 a.m. and his stomach growled for attention.
Tony wandered quiet Honolulu streets looking for a place to get fried eggs and bacon. All the respectable places were closed, and Tony finally ended up at a greasy dive in a narrow and dim alley. The place reeked with grunge. Tony was afraid to touch the menu for fear that it would stick to his fingers and that if he opened it something with too many legs to count might crawl out.
Suddenly Tony wasn't hungry, no matter how much his stomach protested. He saw a stack of donuts under a cracked plastic cover. "I'll have a donut and a coffee," he said. That ought to be safe.
The guy poured a cup of dark, thick coffee. Then he wiped his greasy hand on his dirty apron, grabbed a donut with his fingers, and threw it on the counter in front of Tony. There sat Tony Campolo at 3:30 in the morning, gagging on sour coffee and a stale donut.
All at once the door slammed open and eight or nine prostitutes sauntered in, just finished with a night's work. The joint was small and when the women crowded at the counter they surrounded Tony, swearing, smoking, and gossiping tales of their johns. Another gulp and bite, and Tony would scram.
But something stopped his exit when the woman next to him turned to her friend and said, with a faraway look in her eye, "You know what? Tomorrow's my birthday. I'm gonna be 39...."
That got Tony thinking. He asked the owner if he knew the woman who sat next to him. "Sure, that's Agnes. She's been coming here for years. Comes every night about this time."
"Well," said Tony, "she just said that it was her birthday tomorrow. What do you think? Do you think you and I could do something about that -- maybe throw her a birthday party right here tomorrow night?"
The man got a cute smile on his chubby cheeks. "That's great!" he said. So they made their plans. At 2:30 the next morning Tony was back. He brought crepe paper decorations and a foldout sign that said, "Happy Birthday, Agnes!" By three o'clock, the diner was looking pretty good. By 3:15, it was crowded with wall-to-wall prostitutes. At 3:30, Agnes and her group walked in. Tony had everyone ready to shout, "Happy birthday, Agnes!" She was flabbergasted. Her mouth fell open, her legs wobbled, she put her hands to her head, and almost fell over stunned. Her friend grabbed her by the arm and led her to the counter where her birthday cake rested on a pedestal. Tony led the room in an energetic chorus of "Happy Birthday to You."
Agnes began to cry. She saw the cake with all the candles and wept. Harry, who was not used to seeing a prostitute cry, said rather gruffly, "Blow out the candles, Agnes! Come on! Blow out the candles! If you don't blow 'em out, I'll have to do it!"
So Agnes composed herself, and after a minute or two she blew them out. Everyone cheered. "Cut the cake, Agnes," they yelled. "Cut the cake!"
But Agnes looked down at the cake and, without taking her eyes off it, said to Harry, "Look, Harry ... Would it be all right with you if I ... I mean, is it okay if I ... What I mean is, do you think it's okay if I just kept the cake for a little while? I mean, is it all right if we don't eat it right away?"
Harry didn't know what to say. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "Sure, if that's what you want. Go ahead and keep the cake. Take it home if you want to."
Agnes turned to Tony and asked again, "Is it okay? I live just down the street. Can I take the cake home for a minute? I'll be right back. Honest!"
Agnes picked up the cake like it was the Holy Grail itself. Slowly, she promenaded through the room with it high in front of her for everyone to see. She carried her treasure out the door and everyone there watched her in stunned silence. When she was gone nobody seemed to know what to do, so Tony got up on a chair and said, "What do you say we pray?"
There they were together in a hole-in-the-wall, greasy spoon, all the prostitutes of Honolulu's streets, at 3:30 in the morning, and Tony gathered them to pray for Agnes. He prayed for her life. He prayed for her health. He prayed for her soul and her relationship with God.
When Tony finished praying Harry leaned over the counter and said, accusingly, "Hey! You never told me you was a preacher! What kind of a church do you belong to anyway?"
Tony replied, "I belong to a church that throws parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning."
Harry thought about that for a moment and then said, "Naw you don't! There ain't no church like that! If there was, I'd join it! Yessir, I'd be a member of a church like that!"
What do you think? Would you be a member of a church like that? Is that what God had in mind when talking with Abraham way back in Genesis? How does the Bible urge us to take the journey of Jesus' disciples and follow the mission of God?
Application
Years ago, Dr. Arthur Gossip preached a sermon titled, "When Life Tumbles In, What Then?" He preached it the day after his beloved wife had suddenly died. No one could bring more powerfully than he the challenge of the closing lines:
"Our hearts are very frail, and there are places where the road is very steep and very lonely. Standing in the roaring Jordan, cold with its dreadful chill and very conscious of its terror, of its rushing, I ... call back to you who one day will have your turn to cross it, 'Be of good cheer, my brother, for I feel the bottom and it is sound!' "
That's the hope which breathes through today's readings.
Alternative Application
Romans 5:1-8. Paul's opening in Romans 5 is fresh with many sermon nuggets. Don Francisco's great lyrics in "I'll Never Let Go of Your Hand" might make wonderful poetry to flesh out the themes of this pregnant passage.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19
The words of this psalm emerge from a grateful heart. They flow from the consciousness of one who knows the saving power of God in concrete terms. More to the point, they reflect the experience of someone who has been rescued. Public safety professionals experience this kind of thing frequently. In the daily line of their work they rescue people, and the gratefulness of some of them is remarkable. A woman whose children have been rescued from a fire shows up at the fire station every week with gifts for the firefighters. She falls all over herself thanking them again and again. She becomes a booster for the fire station, raising funds and developing community support. She even remembers the rescuers in her will. This is the kind of gratefulness that flows from this psalm.
But here we have more than brave firefighters on the job. Here we have God as the rescuer.
In a culture where privilege and entitlement are the prevailing sentiments of the day, this is a hard thing to grasp. Most people can't imagine that they need rescuing, so being grateful for such a rescue isn't really within their emotional vocabulary. Yet the truth is that we do need rescuing. We need rescuing from this epidemic of consumerism, which is strangling our spirit and ruining the life of the planet. We need rescuing from the blindness that keeps us from being sensitive to the suffering of others. We need to be rescued from our participation in the wounding and death of millions of innocent people. There is no question about it. We're in trouble. Whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, we are a people who need rescuing. We are a people who need God.
The incredible part of it all is that our rescuer is here, present, ready. All we need do is reach out and grab the lifeline. All we need do is turn to God in our hearts. Once we are able to do this, our own voices will match that of this psalm. Once we accept and embrace this God who rescues we will know the power and wonder of a grateful heart. We will then understand what it means to be saved and our impulse, our desire will be to "offer a thanksgiving of sacrifice as we call upon the name of the Lord."
