Past, Present, Future
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series II, Cycle C
Object:
We have a great history as a nation, but many of us are content with the pious stories we learned as children and shy away from learning more about the great events that shaped America. For instance, most people would prefer the story that, as a child, George Washington said, "I cannot tell a lie," in admitting he had cut down a cherry tree with his axe. The true story, according to Henry Wiencek in his book, An Imperfect God, is that Washington admitted to his mother that he had ridden a favorite horse of hers to death.
Wiencek's book is one of three recent volumes that invite us to learn more about the man who was the father of our country. Wiekncek's book explores Washington's uncomfortable relationship with slaves and slavery, and chronicles how this very imperfect man grew until he became very uncomfortable indeed with the institution that marred our nation's founding.
The book, His Excellency George Washington, by Joseph J. Ellis, examines how the defeats he suffered as a young officer taught him the lessons he needed for victory in the Revolution, and how this one person held the country together, both in war and in peace.
David McCullough's 1776 reminds us how precariously the whole Revolution hung in that fateful year, and how the victories at Christmastime insured that the Revolution would remain viable even after terrible defeats, allowing the French to recognize the new nation and get involved in the war for independence.
As important as these books are, teaching us about the past, we can become so focused on the past that we lose a vision for the future and indeed, can come to resent modern prophets who point the way. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., lived a couple of centuries after Washington, but his nonviolent struggle against racism, and his famous "I Have A Dream" speech were really fulfillments of the path toward freedom and equality imperfectly begun at our nation's founding. An understanding of both past and present events is necessary to know who we are.
In the same way, Isaiah begins this passage by inviting his people to look back at their founding father, Moses, and the great events of the Exodus that set them free as a people. When he speaks of the Lord "who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick ..." (Isaiah 43:16-17), he is unmistakably pointing to the events that shaped God's people as a nation. Just as surely as most of us would recognize a painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware, the people of Israel had a mental picture of the parting of the waters of the Red Sea, and the moment when they closed back on Pharaoh's chariots!
But just as quickly, Isaiah tells us the words of the Lord: "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert"(Isaiah 43:18-19). This is his "I Have A Dream" speech.
There was no danger of the people forgetting the Exodus. They celebrated it every year in the Passover. That festival brought families together to recall the past, and tie it to the present, so they could envision God's future with them. But if they are so focused on the past they cannot look to that future, they will not see that God is doing something new, something that will bring freedom from sin as surely as the Exodus brought freedom from slavery.
This will be an event so great that it will tie all of humanity and nature together. The images of creation having a part in the great redemption to come that is mentioned in this scripture is nothing new. The righteousness of God outlined in the Old and New Testaments is not limited to humanity, but includes all of creation. That's one of the reasons we should care for creation now. If Jesus is the heir of all things, then we must recognize that the heir will return and expect to receive that inheritance from the stewards. We are the stewards of creation, and if we do not care for what is put in our charge, and which does not belong to us but is entrusted to us, then we will prove to be poor stewards indeed.
Isaiah is looking forward to that heir of all things, none other than Jesus himself. And at this point in Lent, so should we. During the Advent and Christmas season we grew to love the child in the manger. Now we are challenged by the adult that infant has become -- challenged to become God's new people, the people God wants us to become. Looking back should inspire us to look forward rather than freezing the past.
We began by talking about American history, but there's an even more ancient American history that can be instructive as well. That's the history of the Anasazi, the Native Americans who built one of the greatest civilizations of any age. They built structures such as Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, five stories high in places, and containing over 600 rooms for crop storage and religious purposes. Pueblo Bonito was bigger than anything ever built in America or Europe until the late nineteenth century. The Anasazi created one of the great civilizations -- and then walked away from it.
In his book, Anasazi America, author, David E. Stuart, charts the course of the amazing people who inhabited the Four Corners area of the American Southwest. Over the course of hundreds of years, these people developed an amazing lifestyle, thriving despite an average rainfall of eight to ten inches a year by changing with the times. Turkeys provided eggs, dogs protected crops, plants provided medicinals as well as food, and always, corn was planted on every available plot in the hope that some of it would thrive.
Eventually, the great houses, with their hundreds of rooms, were built as storage and religious centers. The Anasazi did not observe a difference between the sacred and secular as we do in our society. About a millennium ago, a complex system of hundreds of miles of roads linked distant settlements in a web of trade and worship. During this time, some of the greatest buildings ever constructed rose while Europe foundered in the Dark Ages; a time some call "the thousand years without a bath."
But at one point, the Anasazi system failed. There were periods of catastrophic drought and their precious resources dwindled. It no longer made sense to build great houses and construct royal roads. What happened? According to Stuart, the Anasazi walked away from this way of life, rejected power, and changed to a more egalitarian system that emphasized one's place in the community, conformity to a peculiar way of life, and the necessity of putting others first. The Pueblo Indians, who exist today despite efforts to wipe them out through war and disease, are the descendants of that great system.
"A durable community is one that balances growth with efficiency and refuses to be seduced by greed and power." Stuart writes, and adds that greed "is not a badge of honor. It is the signature of a dying society."
Isaiah wanted his people to walk away from greed and power. So did Jesus whose Sermon on the Mount invites us to an even more perfect system, if we are willing to become a peculiar people who reject power, the trappings of the culture, and the temptation to excuse ourselves because "everyone else acts that way."
It means walking away from a culture that values power and prestige over the community of faith, which chooses death over life.
It seems to me that the wave of so-called "reality television,"while entertaining to some, is built upon the idea that there's only one winner, and everyone else is a loser. By contrast, the Sermon on the Mount invites us to live with all people by rules that promote life and salvation rather than death and destruction.
These sayings, which may seem counterintuitive at first are, in the end, the only way to live -- if we want to live like Jesus.
Historically, the church of Jesus Christ has tried to find a way to get out of doing what Jesus mandated. One of the most popular "outs" given by church leaders is that this Sermon on the Mount is delivered to the disciples, not the crowds. It doesn't count for us. Only those specially chosen by Jesus should turn the other cheek.
This way of thinking became necessary when Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal around the year 315 A.D. Once the church and state became one, then it was important for rulers to be able to authorize the torture, mutilation, and slaying of enemies and friends alike, and still be able to show up for worship on Sunday. Churches prized their relationship with the state, and those who professed suspicion about this relationship were often branded heretics.
Eventually, it was simply assumed that you couldn't have a church unless it was supported by the state, and supported the state in turn. Even the reformers, who did great work by challenging an established church by creating churches of their own, assumed that the church and state needed to work in concert, that their aims and goals were one.
By contrast, the radical reformers, typified by the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century and the Pietists of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and represented in the modern world by the Amish, Mennonites, and Brethren, insisted that the Sermon on the Mount was the norm, rather than the exception, and that it was possible to live this way of life -- assuming you weren't bothered by the fact that you'd be persecuted, shunned, slandered, driven away, arrested, tortured, and murdered.
Assuming you didn't mind standing with Jesus and suffering the same fate.
Are you prepared to walk away from the lures of power and wealth? Are you really and truly willing to take up your cross and follow Jesus? Are you prepared to look back into biblical history not as a literary exercise but because you intend to live forward, into the future, as the stewards of God's earth and disciples of Jesus Christ?
It means being willing to change. And it means you might be misunderstood, reviled, and persecuted by those in authority.
The Roman historian, Tacitus, writing around the year 115 A.D., calls to mind that in order to get rid of rumors that he himself had set fire to Rome, the Emperor Nero attempted to pin the blame on Christians and to persecute them. He felt he could get away with it because Christians were "a class hated for their abominations."
Tacitus referred to our faith as "a most mischievous superstition" which should have been squelched when Pontius Pilate crucified Christ, but which had, by then, spread throughout the entire Roman Empire and found a home in the capital city itself.
Tacitus believed that all Christians hated the rest of humanity and practiced cannibalism and were disloyal to the state. These things weren't true, but it didn't prevent them from being tortured and killed.
What do people think about us? Do they think we are self-righteous hypocrites who look down on others, judgmental, impossible to please, closed minded? Do they have reason to believe that way?
What is true? Have we looked to our past, our Old and New Testament roots, so that we claim our glorious future, not to hoard it to ourselves but to share it with all humanity? Will we practice the same selfless love that Jesus outlined in the Sermon on the Mount and which he himself practiced, loving and forgiving his executioners even as they nailed him to a cross? Are we ready to change the world by following his nonviolent path?
Martin Luther King, Jr., said that one reason he practiced nonviolence was that he hoped not only to free his people, but to save his enemies. Jesus called us to love our enemies, and to work for their salvation, not their eradication. That is our real heritage. Claiming the past, present, and future of our faith is expressed best in this simple phrase: Christ Has Died, Christ Is Risen, Christ Will Come Again! Die with Christ, rise as a new person, secure in the knowledge that Jesus is coming back, work for the kingdom by the rules of the kingdom! God is doing a new thing! Walk away from the old and claim our shared eternal reward. Amen.
Wiencek's book is one of three recent volumes that invite us to learn more about the man who was the father of our country. Wiekncek's book explores Washington's uncomfortable relationship with slaves and slavery, and chronicles how this very imperfect man grew until he became very uncomfortable indeed with the institution that marred our nation's founding.
The book, His Excellency George Washington, by Joseph J. Ellis, examines how the defeats he suffered as a young officer taught him the lessons he needed for victory in the Revolution, and how this one person held the country together, both in war and in peace.
David McCullough's 1776 reminds us how precariously the whole Revolution hung in that fateful year, and how the victories at Christmastime insured that the Revolution would remain viable even after terrible defeats, allowing the French to recognize the new nation and get involved in the war for independence.
As important as these books are, teaching us about the past, we can become so focused on the past that we lose a vision for the future and indeed, can come to resent modern prophets who point the way. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., lived a couple of centuries after Washington, but his nonviolent struggle against racism, and his famous "I Have A Dream" speech were really fulfillments of the path toward freedom and equality imperfectly begun at our nation's founding. An understanding of both past and present events is necessary to know who we are.
In the same way, Isaiah begins this passage by inviting his people to look back at their founding father, Moses, and the great events of the Exodus that set them free as a people. When he speaks of the Lord "who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick ..." (Isaiah 43:16-17), he is unmistakably pointing to the events that shaped God's people as a nation. Just as surely as most of us would recognize a painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware, the people of Israel had a mental picture of the parting of the waters of the Red Sea, and the moment when they closed back on Pharaoh's chariots!
But just as quickly, Isaiah tells us the words of the Lord: "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert"(Isaiah 43:18-19). This is his "I Have A Dream" speech.
There was no danger of the people forgetting the Exodus. They celebrated it every year in the Passover. That festival brought families together to recall the past, and tie it to the present, so they could envision God's future with them. But if they are so focused on the past they cannot look to that future, they will not see that God is doing something new, something that will bring freedom from sin as surely as the Exodus brought freedom from slavery.
This will be an event so great that it will tie all of humanity and nature together. The images of creation having a part in the great redemption to come that is mentioned in this scripture is nothing new. The righteousness of God outlined in the Old and New Testaments is not limited to humanity, but includes all of creation. That's one of the reasons we should care for creation now. If Jesus is the heir of all things, then we must recognize that the heir will return and expect to receive that inheritance from the stewards. We are the stewards of creation, and if we do not care for what is put in our charge, and which does not belong to us but is entrusted to us, then we will prove to be poor stewards indeed.
Isaiah is looking forward to that heir of all things, none other than Jesus himself. And at this point in Lent, so should we. During the Advent and Christmas season we grew to love the child in the manger. Now we are challenged by the adult that infant has become -- challenged to become God's new people, the people God wants us to become. Looking back should inspire us to look forward rather than freezing the past.
We began by talking about American history, but there's an even more ancient American history that can be instructive as well. That's the history of the Anasazi, the Native Americans who built one of the greatest civilizations of any age. They built structures such as Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, five stories high in places, and containing over 600 rooms for crop storage and religious purposes. Pueblo Bonito was bigger than anything ever built in America or Europe until the late nineteenth century. The Anasazi created one of the great civilizations -- and then walked away from it.
In his book, Anasazi America, author, David E. Stuart, charts the course of the amazing people who inhabited the Four Corners area of the American Southwest. Over the course of hundreds of years, these people developed an amazing lifestyle, thriving despite an average rainfall of eight to ten inches a year by changing with the times. Turkeys provided eggs, dogs protected crops, plants provided medicinals as well as food, and always, corn was planted on every available plot in the hope that some of it would thrive.
Eventually, the great houses, with their hundreds of rooms, were built as storage and religious centers. The Anasazi did not observe a difference between the sacred and secular as we do in our society. About a millennium ago, a complex system of hundreds of miles of roads linked distant settlements in a web of trade and worship. During this time, some of the greatest buildings ever constructed rose while Europe foundered in the Dark Ages; a time some call "the thousand years without a bath."
But at one point, the Anasazi system failed. There were periods of catastrophic drought and their precious resources dwindled. It no longer made sense to build great houses and construct royal roads. What happened? According to Stuart, the Anasazi walked away from this way of life, rejected power, and changed to a more egalitarian system that emphasized one's place in the community, conformity to a peculiar way of life, and the necessity of putting others first. The Pueblo Indians, who exist today despite efforts to wipe them out through war and disease, are the descendants of that great system.
"A durable community is one that balances growth with efficiency and refuses to be seduced by greed and power." Stuart writes, and adds that greed "is not a badge of honor. It is the signature of a dying society."
Isaiah wanted his people to walk away from greed and power. So did Jesus whose Sermon on the Mount invites us to an even more perfect system, if we are willing to become a peculiar people who reject power, the trappings of the culture, and the temptation to excuse ourselves because "everyone else acts that way."
It means walking away from a culture that values power and prestige over the community of faith, which chooses death over life.
It seems to me that the wave of so-called "reality television,"while entertaining to some, is built upon the idea that there's only one winner, and everyone else is a loser. By contrast, the Sermon on the Mount invites us to live with all people by rules that promote life and salvation rather than death and destruction.
These sayings, which may seem counterintuitive at first are, in the end, the only way to live -- if we want to live like Jesus.
Historically, the church of Jesus Christ has tried to find a way to get out of doing what Jesus mandated. One of the most popular "outs" given by church leaders is that this Sermon on the Mount is delivered to the disciples, not the crowds. It doesn't count for us. Only those specially chosen by Jesus should turn the other cheek.
This way of thinking became necessary when Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal around the year 315 A.D. Once the church and state became one, then it was important for rulers to be able to authorize the torture, mutilation, and slaying of enemies and friends alike, and still be able to show up for worship on Sunday. Churches prized their relationship with the state, and those who professed suspicion about this relationship were often branded heretics.
Eventually, it was simply assumed that you couldn't have a church unless it was supported by the state, and supported the state in turn. Even the reformers, who did great work by challenging an established church by creating churches of their own, assumed that the church and state needed to work in concert, that their aims and goals were one.
By contrast, the radical reformers, typified by the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century and the Pietists of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and represented in the modern world by the Amish, Mennonites, and Brethren, insisted that the Sermon on the Mount was the norm, rather than the exception, and that it was possible to live this way of life -- assuming you weren't bothered by the fact that you'd be persecuted, shunned, slandered, driven away, arrested, tortured, and murdered.
Assuming you didn't mind standing with Jesus and suffering the same fate.
Are you prepared to walk away from the lures of power and wealth? Are you really and truly willing to take up your cross and follow Jesus? Are you prepared to look back into biblical history not as a literary exercise but because you intend to live forward, into the future, as the stewards of God's earth and disciples of Jesus Christ?
It means being willing to change. And it means you might be misunderstood, reviled, and persecuted by those in authority.
The Roman historian, Tacitus, writing around the year 115 A.D., calls to mind that in order to get rid of rumors that he himself had set fire to Rome, the Emperor Nero attempted to pin the blame on Christians and to persecute them. He felt he could get away with it because Christians were "a class hated for their abominations."
Tacitus referred to our faith as "a most mischievous superstition" which should have been squelched when Pontius Pilate crucified Christ, but which had, by then, spread throughout the entire Roman Empire and found a home in the capital city itself.
Tacitus believed that all Christians hated the rest of humanity and practiced cannibalism and were disloyal to the state. These things weren't true, but it didn't prevent them from being tortured and killed.
What do people think about us? Do they think we are self-righteous hypocrites who look down on others, judgmental, impossible to please, closed minded? Do they have reason to believe that way?
What is true? Have we looked to our past, our Old and New Testament roots, so that we claim our glorious future, not to hoard it to ourselves but to share it with all humanity? Will we practice the same selfless love that Jesus outlined in the Sermon on the Mount and which he himself practiced, loving and forgiving his executioners even as they nailed him to a cross? Are we ready to change the world by following his nonviolent path?
Martin Luther King, Jr., said that one reason he practiced nonviolence was that he hoped not only to free his people, but to save his enemies. Jesus called us to love our enemies, and to work for their salvation, not their eradication. That is our real heritage. Claiming the past, present, and future of our faith is expressed best in this simple phrase: Christ Has Died, Christ Is Risen, Christ Will Come Again! Die with Christ, rise as a new person, secure in the knowledge that Jesus is coming back, work for the kingdom by the rules of the kingdom! God is doing a new thing! Walk away from the old and claim our shared eternal reward. Amen.
