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It was the dirty secret. We were never supposed to talk about it openly. When it was discussed, it was in hushed whispers behind the closed doors of private homes. No, it had nothing to do with sex. It had to do with why my best friends would never eat meat on Fridays. It had to do with that strange ritual called the Rosary. It had to do with those strange women dressed in black and white who looked like penguins. I grew up in a small southeastern Wisconsin town in the 1950s where the majority of the population was either Lutheran or Roman Catholic. Even though the Protestant Reformation had taken place 400 years before on another continent, even though religious wars were no longer being fought, there was still a big chasm between us. We played together in the neighborhoods and on the playgrounds, but we still regarded one another with cautious suspicion. I still remember the shame Lutheran or Catholic parents would feel if one of their children married someone of "the other faith." Some regarded it as near apostasy. Some thought it was tantamount to denying the faith. Some thought it warranted family schism. Such concerns seem almost quaint today when many parents are thankful if their children just marry a Christian, let alone a Christian outside of their denomination.

In that small town I had lots of Roman Catholic friends and I do not remember a single incident where we ever exchanged sharp words, let alone sharp blows, over religion. It's not that our religious faith didn't matter. It did. Most of us regularly went to church on Sunday. Our parents and extended families continually reminded us of its importance. Nevertheless, we reached our separate peace, our secret armistice, by everyone tacitly agreeing to an unspoken treaty. We would never openly talk about religion. Even though we went to our separate churches, even though some went to parochial school, even though some wouldn't eat meat on Fridays, even though some would never even think of uttering the word Rosary, we never asked why. We never talked about going to church. In a way we pretended that religion and God didn't exist or, if they did, they didn't matter. For the sake of peace, for the sake of the pick-up softball game on the vacant lot down the block, we had carved out our "middle ground," our "naked public square," where not only did religion disappear but also where God did not exist. It was a godless neutral ground where God was not allowed to make any claims or demands on us, let alone offer any promises of grace or mercy.

That "middle ground" served us well fifty years ago and enabled us to be friends and conduct our ball games, but the problem has not gone away. The debate is no longer between Protestants and Catholics but between those who believe that religion is purely a private and personal matter and those who believe it has public and civic consequences. It was interesting to see how this was an issue in our last election. When Al Gore chose Joe Lieberman to be his vice-presidential running mate, much was made of Lieberman's Jewish faith and that he publicly called for a return to religion, morality, and God in public life. The Democrats weren't about to let the Republicans be the only ones who could talk publicly about God and religion. Then after Bush's election, his selection of John Ashcroft to be Attorney General set off a storm of controversy led by those who feared that Ashcroft would let his administration of the law of the land be skewed by his conservative Christian beliefs. The on-going debate over prayer in the schools, vouchers for private and parochial schools, homosexual marriage, alternative lifestyles, abortion, and so on, has exposed the fact that Americans still can't agree on the role of religion in public life. The debate over the first amendment still rages. Does it mean the "dis-establishment" of religion, where religion is excluded from public life, or does it mean the "free exercise" of religion, where the government actually encourages public religious life but never expresses a preference for one form over another?

I suspect that most of us have already worked out our separate peace. For the sake of our own peace of mind and of conscience, we have convinced ourselves that it is actually possible for us to live our lives in a kind of "middle ground" where God and religion are irrelevant. Therefore, many of our prayers talk as if God is absent, as if life is godless, as if we are alone and need God to be "present" with us. We pray for God to be with us "all the time" and "wherever we go," as if there are times and places where God has been "absent without leave" and no longer with us.

Such attitudes are quite understandable because there often are those "dark and tragic" experiences of life that seem to be bereft of God's presence. So much of life seems to be perfectly explained by the laws and principles of natural science without the need to invoke the divine presence. There are our own moral lapses and failures which would make us cower in shame and fear were we not able rationalize that we live in some "middle ground" where God is not present to scrutinize us.

More than once I have reminded someone, who rejoices that God is with them wherever they go, that this is not necessarily good news. There are times, especially in the midst of our moral lapses and ethical shortcomings, that the idea of the presence of God makes us shake in our shoes. We would prefer that such moments go unnoticed by the deity.

It is understandable that we would create this sort of "middle ground," but it is not biblical. The radical monotheism of the Bible knows of no such world. This entire world is God's. God is not occasionally absent, attending to more important things in heaven. God is not occasionally asleep at the wheel. God did not create this universe and then walk away from it, leaving it to fend for itself. On the contrary, God not only created everything that is but also is continually involved in its daily operation. God governs and protects. God rewards and punishes. Even the impersonal laws and principles of the natural world are the means by which God continues to manage his creation. There is no "middle ground," "neutral space," or "naked public square" from which God is absent or, worse yet, has been banished.

This perspective on God's relationship to the world is especially evident in the Old Testament prophets. Today's First Lesson from the prophet Jeremiah is a classic example. The prophets such as Jeremiah were not just predictors of the future. Although the prophets often boldly speak of the future as "foretellers," their primary role was to speak of the present. They were fundamentally "forthtellers," daring to be able to understand what God was really doing in the present. They claimed to be able to see what God was actually doing now in the ordinary events of human history. And what they saw was often very different from what those around them saw. God was not absent from this world. All of life belonged to God. God constantly related to this world in one of two ways. God was either blessing or cursing. There was no "middle ground." There was no "naked public square." God ruled. God governed. And God did that either by blessing or by cursing.

This either/or perspective on God's relationship to this world is clearly evident in the prophet Jeremiah's words in today's First Lesson. "Those who trust in mere mortals" are cursed by God. Because their hearts do not trust God but the strength of human flesh, they are doomed to live life as if they were in a parched, uninhabited desert. But those "who trust in the Lord," their lives are blessed. Their lives will bear fruit, just as water brings life to plants in the midst of summer heat and enables them to bring forth a bountiful harvest. There is nothing to fear, nothing to be anxious over, and nothing to worry about because God is taking care of them.

Jeremiah's determination to bring God's word to bear on every situation in life, his refusal to allow God to be banished to some private or personal sphere of life, and his desire to put all of life under the microscope of God did not win him many friends. Even though this was a world removed from ours by two and a half millennia, people did what we still do: they carved out their "middle ground" where God was absent and not able to bother them. The religious establishment had confined God to the cult, to the temple, to the liturgy of worship and prayer. God was confined to the personal sphere of religious life. Therefore the religious leadership didn't need to address the sensitive political and social issues of the day. Perhaps fearing for their own welfare, they were content to keep God out of public life and in the temple. It was convenient not to raise the tough and embarrassing moral questions concerning social injustices or the immoral conduct of the king and his chronies. In contrast, Jeremiah's criticism in the name of God of the perverted religious life of Israel was relentless. He called the religious establishment to account. They could not ignore the injustices around them. As a result, he made few friends and stirred up lots of enemies.

Likewise, Jeremiah directed his ire at the political establishment that also had carved out its "middle ground," immune from the claims and demands of God. The king and his ruling class were all for religion and God as long as they stayed in the temple and the worship cult and didn't meddle with the ambitions of the regime. The kings were more interested in playing the games of political intrigue and protecting their power and privilege than in being faithful to God and the covenant God had established with Israel. Jeremiah would not tolerate such "middle ground." God could not be controlled or manipulated. God's claims on Israel were total. He saw things differently than the political establishment. The growing threat of foreign nations was a sign of God's imminent judgment on an unfaithful and disobedient nation. This was not a time for more military and political alliances but a time to return to God. Without such a renewal of faith, the nation was doomed.

To demonstrate the dark fate that awaited Israel dramatically, Jeremiah engaged in some attention-getting public actions. He publicly smashed clay pots, declaring that this is what God was going to do to Israel through the invasion of Babylon. He walked around Jerusalem carrying a yoke on his back and announcing that Israel was going to be yoked and enslaved by the coming invasion. Israel could not escape God in some fictional "middle ground." God was the Lord of all of life. There would be no way to evade his coming judgment. Both the political and religious leadership would pay a price for their sin.

Today's First Lesson reinforces just such a view of reality. Jeremiah insists that God is continually testing the heart and soul of humanity. If people trust in God, they will be blessed with an abundant and fruitful life. If they trust the lies and perversities of "mere mortals," they will suffer the consequences. They will be cursed, condemned to "be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land" (v. 6).

Such "politically incorrect speech" was not welcome and Jeremiah paid a price. He was beaten, chained in stocks, publicly mocked, ridiculed, and thrown into a well with the hope that he would be permanently silenced. Such was the fate of being a prophet, for daring not just to be a "foreteller" but a "forthteller," for daring to tell the truth about the current state of affairs.

In today's Gospel, Jesus also reflects such a view of God's relationship to this world. This brief passage from the Gospel of Luke parallels the famous Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. This passage, however, has been traditionally called "The Sermon on the Plain." Jesus' words reveal that he like Jeremiah believes that there is "no middle ground." Humanity can't escape the claims and demands of God in some "middle ground," secular space, or "naked public square." We live under either the blessings or the curses of God.

In this way Jesus sounds just like so many of the prophets before him. But Jesus goes beyond such prophets as Jeremiah by claiming the authority to reverse and undo the way blessings and curses were understood both by the prophets and by the world. Jeremiah would agree with our world's understanding of blessing and curse. Poverty, hunger, sorrow, hatred, and ridicule are not blessings. Jeremiah and the gurus of our world might disagree on how one becomes blessed or cursed. Jeremiah would see it as being dependent upon our trust in God. The successful of our world would see it as being dependent on good luck and hard work. But they would both agree that it is cursed and wretched to be poor, hungry, and hated.

But not Jesus! He reverses every common sense notion of what it means to be blessed and cursed. Contrary to the brawny individualism of a Jesse Ventura, contrary to the successful entrepre-neurialism of a Bill Gates or a Ted Turner, contrary to the U. S. Marines' search for "a few good men," Jesus curses the rich, the satisfied, the joyful, the self-sufficient, the popular, and the famous. Jesus curses those who have picked themselves up by their bootstraps and made something of themselves. If he were using Jeremiah's words, he would probably say, "Cursed are those who are 'like a tree planted by the water, sending out its roots by the stream (whose) leaves shall stay green' and even in the midst of drought 'bear fruit.' "

His reversal continues as he blesses those who, according to every common sense understanding of the word, are cursed.

Blessed are you who are poor,

for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now,

for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now,

for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
And when they exclude you, revile you,
And defame you on account of the Son of Man.
Rejoice in that day and leap for joy....
-- Luke 6:20-23


And what even makes Jesus' claims even more outrageous is that he makes them in the name of God. Like Jeremiah and the prophets before him, Jesus was a "forthteller." He claimed to be able to understand what God was up to in this world. And it was not what anyone else expected.

Implicit in Jesus' outrageous claims about what was a curse and what was a blessing was a claim for himself. He was claiming to have the divine authority to reverse the very notions of blessing and curse. Such a reversal was at the heart of the startling, new kingdom that Jesus was bringing into this world. In this kingdom Jesus blesses what the rest of the world would only consider a curse. In this kingdom Jesus enables one to see the hollowness of the world's love of wealth, power, and prestige. What appears to be blessing is in fact a curse.

It was making claims like this that got Jesus into trouble. Just like Jeremiah and the prophets before him, what Jesus said and did was "politically incorrect." But worse than that, it was heresy. Therefore, in the name of God, Jesus had to die. And he did. On the cross he suffered the fate of those who dared to defy not only laws of this world but also the laws of God. And when Jesus died, it surely looked like his enemies were right. Jesus was a heretic, a blasphemer. His notions of blessing and curse were wrong.

But then, surprise! On the third day he was raised from the dead. Jesus lives! And it is clear that the audacious claims that Jesus had made not only for himself but also for his kingdom are true. In Jesus and his kingdom, God is indeed doing a new thing. As the Son of God, Jesus is the one who has been divinely authorized to turn this world upside-down and inside-out, to turn blessings into curses and curses into blessings.

Where does that put us? If there is indeed no "middle ground," no godless secular space, no "naked public square" where we can flee the presence and claims of God, then we are in trouble! Why? Because more than we would ever want to admit, Jeremiah's indictment of ancient Israel is also true of us. We put our "trust in mere mortals." We cling to our riches, our reputations, our political and social alliances at the expense of what is right, true, and just, at the expense of God. If there is no "middle ground," if God is never absent and is always there with us looking over our shoulder, then, when we are lying, cheating, gossiping, lusting, and stealing, we are in big trouble. If there is no "middle ground," then we can hardly have a clean conscience when so much of the world is hungry and starving.

The truth is that, because there is no "middle ground," we are in a big mess. Saint Paul is right. "All our righteousness is as filthy rags." Luther had it right when on his death bed, confronted with his mortality, his sin, his brokenness, he uttered, "Wir sind Bettler, nicht wahr?" "We are all beggars, aren't we?" We don't have a leg to stand on.

But because there is no "middle ground," there is also Good News! And the Good News is that there standing with us under the curses and in the midst of everything that is wrong with us and this world is the one who has been divinely authorized to reverse those curses. There is not only no place in this world that can escape the divine curse, there is also no place in this world that has not been rescued by the divine blessing. Despite the curse, despite God's disappointment with our trust of mere mortals and other assorted idolatries of this world, despite God's own righteous anger with our sin, God's heart is ultimately love. God ultimately wants to rescue us from this plight.

Even Jeremiah, after seeing his warnings of doom come true and Israel destroyed by the Babylonians and carried off into exile, refused to believe that God had given up on his people. Faced with such destruction, he concluded his ministry proclaiming the gracious promises of God. God's love will ultimately triumph. God's curses will one day be trumped by his blessings. God will make a new covenant with his people and remember their sin no more.

Of course, that hope proclaimed by Jeremiah did come true in the one who speaks to us in today's Gospel. Because there is no "middle ground," no space in this universe from which God has been banished, God in Christ comes to overthrow the curse, to reverse the judgment and forgive our sins. God in Christ comes to reach us with his blessing wherever we are in this world. Because there is no "middle ground," there is no desert, no plight, no disease, no poverty, no despair, no shame, no persecution, no disaster, no sin, and no curse that God in Christ cannot bless. Because there is no "middle ground," there is no dark lonely night, no hospital ward, no unemployment line, no bankruptcy proceeding, no chemotherapy treatment, no divorce court, no cemetery that cannot be transformed by the blessing of Christ. The crucified and risen one, the one who dared to bless those whom not only the world but God had cursed, comes to do the same for us.

And the Good News gets even better. When you leave this building after the worship service is completed and go out to the parking lot and into the world, a world that often seems utterly godless and devoid of anything that might remind you of the presence of God, remember there is no "middle ground." God in Christ is with you as you enter that hostile world. That promise of Christ transforms that world into a different kind of place. It is now fertile ground. It is now a field waiting to be harvested. It is now a place to carry out the mission of God. As you walk out the doors of this building, realize that you are now entering the mission field. Because there is no "middle ground," everything that lies before you is God's mission field. You have nothing to fear. You are that "tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. (You) shall not fear when heat comes, and (your) leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought (you are) not anxious, and (you do) not cease to bear fruit" (v. 8).

With a promise like that, bring on the world! There is no "middle ground"! You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!