Balm in Gilead

(Jeremiah 8:18-9:1, Psalm 113,
I Timothy 2:1-7, Luke 16:1-13)

Today we’re presented with a weird collage, an off-kilter kaleidoscope, of Scriptures: Jeremiah mourning the impending doom of his people; the letter to Timothy preaching what seems to be a very tame, domesticated, message that encourages kissing up to the powers that be, and Jesus’ famously difficult parable of the unjust steward – which seems to have 3 or 4 different lessons tacked randomly onto the end. If you came to hear a sermon that brings together this bizarre grouping of texts in perfect harmony – sorry to disappoint you – there may be someone out there who can do that, but that person’s not preaching here today. However, these texts, seemingly disconnected as they are, speak not only to their own time, but to our own. While I can’t bring these contrasting texts into perfect accord, let me try to unpack these them as best I can.

Jeremiah is the prophet whom God has saddled with the task of announcing to Judah its upcoming destruction. Jeremiah has tried – and tried – and tried to persuade Judah’s weak king, Zedekiah, and the political and religious establishment, but without avail. For his efforts, he’s been ostracized by family and friends, mocked, imprisoned. For this prophet, no good deed goes unpunished. In our reading today, it appears that some of Jeremiah’s fellow citizens at last see trouble on the horizon, and began to cry for God to save them – is not the Lord in Zion? Have we not always been told that God is on our side? They express their despair with seemingly deadpan words that form one of the saddest laments in the Bible: “the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” – Winter’s coming, and the cupboard is bare. But, for God, all this lament is too late – God gets his side of the argument in: “why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols.”

Given the treatment he has received, you might think that Jeremiah would become bitter, vengeful, willing to wash his hands of his disobedient people. If Jeremiah were of an especially nasty disposition, he might even cheer God on as destruction came on those who ignored his message. “Smite ‘em, Lord!” But that’s not how Jeremiah responds. Though he’s compelled to announce impending doom for his people, he takes no pleasure in the task. He stands with his people in their suffering – he literally wants to cry himself a river for what is about to befall his people. And in so doing, Jeremiah speaks for God. Even though God is about to deliver Judah into exile, he takes not the slightest pleasure in doing so. And, as future readings from Jeremiah will show, God is doing all this not to destroy his people, but so that a remnant may one day be restored to Judah. God’s punishment of Judah is not about being vindictive – God does not throw temper tantrums - but rather it is about getting peoples’ attention so that they may be restored to the path of faith. Because ultimately, even in this situation, God is in the salvation business – the same mission of salvation that God pursues to this day.

I say all this because in our own time, many self-appointed, self-anointed prophets speak harsh words in God’s name toward people who are at a safe distance from them. One might think of those who picket military funerals in order to express what they see as their righteous rage at various perceived national sins, or those who see certain illnesses, such as AIDS, as God’s punishment of those they consider especially revolting sinners. To those with whom they disagree, they say, “Turn or burn!!” In hearing these self-appointed and self-anointed prophets, we don’t get the slightest sense that they understand or identify with those they chastise. They speak of those with whom they disagree as if they’re some sort of lesser species of life, less than fully human. Their words, regardless how benign their intent, come across as mean-spirited, vindictive, hateful. This isn’t to say we are not to speak the truth in love – we are commanded to do that very thing, to speak the truth in love, even when it is painful - but part of that truth is that we are all sinners, that our own sin is as detestable to God as that of our neighbors, and it is only by God’s grace that we have a place to stand before God or any words at all to speak to our neighbor.

God’s love is not bounded by our categories. Last week, I mentioned the pastoral letter of our Conference Minister, the Rev. Dr. Russ Mitman, expressing his concern and disagreement with the pastor who threatened to burn copies of the Koran. Among Christians there is a wide range of views about where followers of Islam, people of the Koran, stand before God – and some Christians would say that followers of Islam are beyond God’s mercy. Traditionally, followers of Islam trace their lineage from Abraham, not through Isaac, but through Ishmael, the son of Abraham’s slave Hagar – remember that God also said that he would make a great nation from Ishmael. Because of this, many Christian readers of Genesis see Muslims as beyond the bounds of God’s grace. Some take the words of Scripture, “Jacob I loved, and Esau I hated” as a warrant to say that all followers of Islam are hated by God. I would challenge this view on several points: First, not all Muslims – perhaps not even most Muslims – claim Esau as an ancestor – remember, Esau was the elder son of Isaac, not Ishmael, just as Jacob, the favored one, was Isaac’s younger son. It is true that Esau married one of Ishmael’s daughters, but she was only one of Esau’s several wives. Esau was traditionally father of the Edomites, and there’s a variety of views concerning their outcome – some say they were the ancestors of some in Turkey and Jordan, some say they were the ancestors of the Idumeans who were absorbed into Israel, and some say they disappeared altogether, as the book of Obadiah prophesied. Secondly, I think it can justly be claimed that the words “Esau I hated” were primarily about whom God was going to use in bringing about the salvation of God’s people – in earthly terms, both Jacob and Esau prospered, but it was through the line of Jacob, not Esau, that Israel and Judah trace their history. In choosing Jacob, God rejected Esau. We might think of Jesus’ words in Luke 14:26 – “if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters – and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” We would not interpret this to think that we are to do ill or even wish ill toward our families or ourselves, but rather that we must be willing at any notice to set all these aside for the sake of the Gospel, if God so calls us.

Further, the later prophets – Isaiah, Hosea, speak of the nations – Gentiles - coming unto the Lord. Hosea speaks of those who were formerly considered “not my children” later being called “children of the living God.” We, every one of us here, are among those who in Paul’s words were grafted into the family of faith, not by birth but by faith. As one of my seminary professors said, salvation is not a matter of biology – not a matter of bloodlines – but rather a matter of pneumatology – the workings of the Holy Spirit. So when it comes to setting boundaries, to saying some are loved and others are hated, that is God’s business, not our own. Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares, the wheat and the weeds, tells us that, in this life, it’s easy to confuse immature wheat with immature weeds, and vice versa. Only at the end will God sort the situation out. Separating wheat from weeds is above our pay grade, so to speak. As I’ve said before, in this life, God has appointed us to the invitation committee, not to the selection committee.

This is not to say that I endorse everything in the Koran. While the Koran speaks very highly of Jesus and accords Jesus the greatest respect as a prophet, it flatly rejects the idea of identifying Jesus with God. And on that point, Islam and Christianity part company. While I fully respect the rights of others to order their lives based on the Koran, to me it does not have the place of authority that our Bible, Old and New Testament both, has. All that said, it is not for us to say what plans God has for Muslims, in this world or the world to come. Again, that’s above our pay grade, at any rate certainly above mine. In the meantime, perhaps it is better for Christians to maintain respectful dialogue with Muslims than, in a show of contempt, to cut off all contact.

In our reading from I Timothy, some strong words are used: it speaks of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. There it is - God desires everyone to be saved, desires everyone to come to the knowledge of the truth. It’s right there in the Bible, in black and white. Whether in the interaction of divine omnipotence and human freedom – including freedom to turn away from God - whether God’s desire is fulfilled, is not for us to know in this life. But we are to treat everyone as one whom God desires to save. The injunction to pray for those in authority, while it seems like cringing and fawning under oppression, actually serves two very different purposes. First, remember that this was a time of emperor worship, and for a believer in Jesus Christ, praying freely for the emperor was a very welcome alternative to praying under compulsion to the emperor. And secondly, it is presented as an evangelistic strategy, a way of winning over hostile “powers that be” to the Gospel. Because even those hostile “powers that be” are people whom God desires to save. This doesn’t mean we have to submit or enable, much less encourage, the evil done by those in power – only that we are to remember them to God in prayer.

Finally, we have the famously difficult parable of the unjust steward – in today’s language, you’d perhaps say the parable of the crooked accountant. I’m a beancounter myself at my day job, and unfortunately that doesn’t necessarily help in untangling this parable. The beancounter’s boss suspected his dishonesty, and told the man to turn in his books. With his back against the wall – not strong enough to dig ditches, too proud to beg – he found a way to save his own skin by writing off part of the balance of all his master’s debtors, thus earning their undying gratitude and, he hoped, their assistance during his impending period of unemployment. And the master, however reluctantly, had to give credit where credit was due; the crooked beancounter found a clever way to save his own hide at his employer’s expense. The master couldn’t very well undo what the beancounter had done without opening a can of worms and putting himself in an awkward position. And from the point of view of those in debt to the master, the beancounter had extended grace and forgiveness to them – even though it wasn’t necessarily his to give. And Jesus says that the children of this age are smarter in dealing with their own kind than the children of light. In other words, if only those called to spread the Gospel – and that’s all of us – were as inventive and energetic and driven in working for the salvation of others, as the crooked accountant was in saving his own skin; if only we were as energetic in extending grace and forgiveness as disciples of Jesus as the crooked accountant was in his own self-interest – what a different neighborhood, what a different world it would be.

So our Scriptures this morning give us three very different images – a tearful, grief-stricken prophet, a prayerful disciple, and a crooked but inventive beancounter – of God’s great love for us, and for our neighbors, of God’s desire for reconciliation with us all. In the time of trial, when we or our family or friends are faced with tragedy, never doubt that God stands with us in the time of trial, that when we weep over tragedy, God weeps with us. God has not promised a blissful, carefree life, but rather that God will be present in all our cares and trials. And as disciples of Christ, we are to be present with others in their cares and trials, in the name of Jesus. May it be so with us here at Emanuel Church. Amen.
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Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Saturday, September 25 at 1pm for our 149th anniversary picnic, and on September 26 at 10 am for our 149th anniversary worship celebration. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org